New Blood
by notmanos
Summary: Logan returns to the mansion to investigate the curious case of the powered girl who isn't a mutant. And he isn't the only person to return either ... just in time to confront a major threat.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his crew are mine - don't make me hurt you._

_N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X3" and "Suicide Run"._

* * *

NEW BLOOD

* * *

1

The waiting was the worst part.

All had been quiet for the entire month, but Logan didn't trust it. He knew better than that. The Yakuza and the Triad hadn't moved into the Russians old territory, and he trusted them not to, as they had clearly decided they didn't want to tangle with him again. After all, every time they'd tangled in the past - that he remembered - he'd won, or at least caused so much damage that winning wasn't worth it. As far as he could tell, if you were gonna lose a fight, that was the thing you should aim for: a loss that would still make the winner wish they hadn't started the fight in the first place.

But he expected the Russians to be back, with something - or someone - that they thought could handle him. They just didn't have as much first hand experience with him as the Asian gangs. They'd figure they were incompetent and try their luck. It was something to admire about these gangster types - they didn't quit, even when it was deeply stupid to continue onward. It made him feel smart.

He kind of expected them to try something before now, but he couldn't say he was disappointed. It was nice to do nothing for a while; reminded him of the old days. But it stopped being nice and became boring when Tony took off to Singapore and took Faith with him, which was a week ago. He caught up on DVDs, read a bunch of books, and saw so many hockey games he actually knew what was currently going on in the NHL, which was a sign that he needed to do something before he went bonkers. He was actually tempted to go into Yakuza territory and start some shit, even though having the Yakuza and the Russian mafia after him at the same time would be supremely ill advised. But a restless him was a dangerous thing, which he had learned a long time ago. Usually he didn't have to wait for trouble to find him; in fact, it seemed to follow him around like a stalker. It would figure that the one time he wanted it to show up, it'd take a vacation.

One night he was sucking down beers, watching the Leafs get pounded (which he always found hilarious), when the phone rang. Since this was Faith's apartment, it was usually for Faith, unless it was Faith calling him. He did the time difference math in his head, and figured it could be her. He muted the TV and answered the phone, but it wasn't who he expected. "Logan? Is that you?"

Talk about mixed feelings - was this a good surprise or a bad one? "Storm? How'd you get this number?"

"Rogue."

"Oh. Yeah, shoulda guessed. She's an excellent communication system." That was a nice way of saying tattletale. He rubbed his eyes, figuring a call out of the blue couldn't be good. "What's up?"

"Are we gonna pretend I don't know what you're doing in Vancouver?" she asked sharply.

Rogue must have said something about that too, assuming Bob may have mentioned it. That girl really needed to learn when to keep her mouth shut. "Yeah, unless you want to end this conversation now."

She was quiet for a moment, long enough to communicate her displeasure with him. "Fine, we'll discuss it later. We have a problem, and I thought you'd know who could help us with it."

That was an odd way to put it. "What's wrong?"

"We have a new student, Paloma Ortiz, who claimed to be from Costa Rica. She said she had trouble with her family, and she seemed really upset whenever they were mentioned. She appears to be very strong, with excellent reflexes and a minor healing factor. But something didn't seem … right about her, so we did some tests."

"And?"

"And she's not a mutant. She's super strong, but she has no X gene. I didn't really understand it, but I remembered something one of your friends mentioned: Slayers. Could she be a Slayer?"

What an interesting question. Although the fact that she referred to Angel, Bob, Yasha, Wesley, and Rags as "his friends" seemed to split his life into two separate parts. If he was honest with himself, it was more than two pieces; it was four or five, or maybe a dozen. "Maybe. I don't know how you tell."

"Does one of your friends know?"

Again, "one of _your_ friends". "I think so. I'll talk to 'em. What about the girl? You didn't tell her yet, did ya?"

"That she's not a mutant? Hell no. I thought it might be best to determine what she is before telling her what she isn't."

"That's prob'ly for the best."

Storm paused again, but Logan got the sense that she was weighing whether to say something or not. She ultimately decided to go ahead and say it. "Listen … the quicker you can do this the better. Her story about how she got here is very non-specific, and I haven't been able to confirm any part of her story."

"She's lying. Scared kids do that."

"I know. But … it's a feeling. There's a lot she's not saying."

"She seem dangerous?"

"So far? No, she seems shy and sweet. But she's strong enough that she could be dangerous if she wanted to be."

What mutant couldn't you say that about? Or Slayers, if Faith was any representation of them. "I'll get on it. Be back as soon as I can." He hung up, and punched up a familiar number, although one he hadn't called in a while. "Giles, you busy right now?"

If anyone knew how to tell a Slayer from a non-Slayer, it was gonna be a Watcher, Logan just hoped he could, and that Storm's "gut feelings" about the girl were just an exaggeration. Otherwise, this could be more trouble that no one needed.

* * *

Kitty vaguely remembered when she first came to the mansion that this part of Roosevelt Avenue was all small boutique shops, including a fabric store, which seemed wildly exotic if only for its sheer novelty. (She'd never seen one before.)

But it was gone now, as were many of the small, strange shops, replaced by coffee chains (two _different_ ones! Who needed that much coffee in a one block radius?) and other places you could see just about anywhere. The two lone hold outs were a small candy shop, where they actually made the stuff by hand (as well as "gourmet popcorn", but she had no idea what that could possibly be), and the tiny used book shop that she knew Logan haunted when he was in town. It was responsible for the Raymond Chandler and untranslated Japanese horror novels in the school library, as Logan often donated the books after he read them. That was one thing she'd never have guessed about Logan, that he was a voracious reader. She couldn't have been more shocked if he collected porcelain dolls.

It was of sad to see the quirky block become something generic, but in its favor, the block seemed cleaner and less menacing, so maybe gentrification did have some perks. Still, it seemed tragic. And yet here she was, standing with an overpriced lemonade bought from one of the coffee shops, with Bobby and the new girl, Paloma, who both liked those expensive, complicated coffee drinks that looked to be half whipped cream. (She had just never gotten a taste for coffee, although the caffeine was nice at times.) Bobby thought it might be nice to show Paloma some of the town - what few interesting spots there were, which could be counted on one hand - to try and bring her out of her shell. Bobby was always nice to the new kids, but part of her wondered if he was flirting with her.

And why not? Paloma was gorgeous enough that she was kind of jealous of her. Straight black shoulder length hair, big, dark eyes, naturally tan skin, and a long, lean body - yeah, who wasn't jealous of her? She was as close to perfect as a sixteen year old girl who wasn't an airbrushed magazine picture could be. Yet she was painfully shy; she had spent most of her time at the school hiding in her room. It was like she was scared of something, although when Kitty asked her about it she denied it. Still, something seemed not quite right. Why was she so scared? Did her parents treat her that badly? She'd heard some horror stories, and some kids just never got over it.

Kitty found herself walking up the sidewalk after Bobby and Paloma, feeling like a third wheel. She suspected Bobby only asked her to come along because Paloma wouldn't have gone out with him otherwise. She should have guessed that to begin with; she felt like an idiot now.

They seemed to be the only ones on the street right now. They could hear thumping car stereos a couple of streets over, but not much else. It actually struck her as kind of eerie, post-apocalyptic … well, save for the sounds of Snoop Dogg. There weren't a lot of post-apocalyptic films with rap soundtracks, were there? Why was that?

Sometimes she wondered if she had ADD. Her mind just went off into weird areas sometimes.

A guy started coming down the street towards them. It was a young guy in an oversized Army surplus jacket and baggy jeans, black sunglasses hiding his eyes, his hair short, blond, and messy in a calculated way. Paloma stopped dead, and it took Bobby a couple of steps to realize he'd left her behind. He turned back towards her, a curious look on his face. "Something wrong?"

Since his back was turned, Bobby didn't see the blond guy raise his hand and say, "Sleep."

Just like that, Bobby's eyes closed and he keeled over, hitting the sidewalk in a limp, narcoleptic fit. Paloma rushed towards him, tossing her cup aside, but he said, "Freeze," and she stopped dead. The blond guy grinned in an unsettling manner, showing slightly uneven teeth. "You know you're not immune to me, Pally." He seemed to notice Kitty then, and she went intangible just before he commanded her to "Sleep." Nothing happened, and he scowled. "What the fuck is this?"

So he was a mutant? What kind? Could he say things and make them so, or was he some kind of telepath? She didn't know, but she was glad being intangible seemed to make her immune to him. Now what?

Kitty had come to the decision that she should phase him through something when a car screeched up beside the curb, a beat up Cavalier, and a big, muscular green guy with some kind of serpent tattooed on the side of his face got out. He was already scowling, and one of his arms seemed twice as thick as one of her legs. "Grab them," the blond guy said, and Kitty quickly grabbed Bobby and phased them through the sidewalk.

It was odd phasing through thick matter, so all sound was very muffled until she phased them up inside the book shop, onto the floor between a couple of bookshelves, a feeling very much like surfacing through thick, dark water. There was no one around to see them.

She left Bobby where he was and ran to the window, phasing out the last second so she could plunge through onto the sidewalk once more, hoping to grab Paloma and make a more permanent escape. It had taken less than a minute, but it didn't matter, because as soon as she was back outside, she heard the screech of tires on asphalt, and saw the Chevy speed away, the green guy, Paloma, and the blond one gone. She did her best to memorize the license plate, but quickly gave up, as this was no matter for the cops. If they were mutants - and what else were they? - the police wouldn't be able to handle them.

At least it proved that whoever they were, they were dumb. Who would kidnap a mutant so close to X-Men headquarters? It'd be a pleasure to kick their asses.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Giles was able to teleport in, as Rags wasn't the only one who could do it by spell, but by the way he stumbled when he first appeared in Faith's living room, he hadn't perfected it either. As he paused and straightened his glasses, making a stab at dignity, Logan stood up and stretched, working the kinks out of his neck, and shut off the television. "Glad you weren't busy."

"One of the few perks of having no personal life," Giles replied acerbically, adjusting the strap on the Jack Bauer like man purse he was carrying. It looked heavy, so presumably it had a bunch of Watcher like stuff, and he'd have to forgive him for that.

"If it's anything, I know what you mean," Logan said. Giles gave him a surprisingly caustic look. "I'm not being sarcastic."

"Oh really? Yasha, Naomi, Faith, Helga … who am I leaving out?"

He scowled. "Okay, I'm a slut. But I was alone for years."

Giles looked dubious, but didn't comment further. Hey, he said he'd been alone, but he hadn't claimed to have not had sex. This was just him and his odd luck with women. He usually had no trouble getting women (well, now and then … ), but they had a tendency to get killed or die around him. Smart ones ran for the hills at the first opportunity. It still left him alone.

They went ahead and teleported to the mansion, although they actually ended up in the driveway outside it. Giles managed not to stumble this time, and Logan felt his head spin, but he managed to keep steady. Still wasn't as bad as Rags's lunch losing teleports. Giles looked around at what he could see of the mansion and the front grounds, and noted, "This isn't ostentatious at all."

"Think this is bad, wait'll you see the inside."

Logan led the way, opening the front door and walking in, and he was greeted by the sounds and smells of more people than he had dealt with in a while. The television was on, and there were a bunch of kids in the "living room", spread over the couches and chairs, some sitting on the floor, all watching something that had a great deal of explosions in it. But Sunshine, the Canadian gender alter, was right there (currently a girl), and said, loud enough to be heard over the explosion, "Hey Logan."

Suddenly everybody was looking at him, many with obvious shock and surprise, some with badly hidden awe, some with even worse hidden fear. Many said hi to him, and while some eyed Giles with wariness or curiosity, most ignored him. What the hell was this?

Giles leaned in, and murmured, "I had no idea you were a rock star here."

He scowled at him. "I'm not. I got no fucking clue what this is about."

One of the telepaths must have alerted Storm he was here, because she came striding down the hall, saying, "Logan, I had no idea you could get here so fast. I was expecting to pick you up."

"You made it sound urgent," he said, then gestured to Giles. "Rupert Giles, Ororo Munro. 'Ro, Giles."

They greeted each other politely and shook hands, and then Storm asked, "So you're like Wesley, correct?"

Giles did his best not to roll his eyes, but clearly he wanted to. "I've never heard that comparison before. But yes, I'm a Watcher."

"And you've worked with girls who are … different?" She must not have wanted to say "Slayer" within earshot of the other kids. Giles nodded an affirmative, and she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and asked, "You're a sorcerer?"

"Warlock. That's the name for a male witch."

"Oh. Sorry. I get them mixed up."

"If you'd ever met one, you wouldn't."

Actually, Logan knew he'd met both, but he still mixed them all up; in his head, they were all just "magic guys". But he didn't mention that, as he'd already gotten one evil look from Giles already.

"What do -" Storm began, but she was cut off as the front door slammed open, and Kitty came in, dragging an unconscious Bobby with her. He was both taller and heavier than her, so he was threatening to knock her down at any second.

"Help," Kitty said, almost falling over. Logan was already there, grabbing Bobby and pulling him off of her. "Logan, oh thank god you came back now."

"What happened?" Storm asked, looking out the open door as if expecting someone following her.

"We got attacked by these guys out on Roosevelt. They put Bobby to sleep and kidnapped Paloma. I got us out by phasing through the street."

Logan propped Bobby up in a nearby chair, and looked at the kids, who were just gawping at him. "Anybody wanna get a first aid kit?" he barked. Several jumped, but only one rushed off to do it.

"Who attacked you?" Storm wondered.

Kitty shrugged. "Some blond guy in an army jacket, who just said "Sleep" and put Bobby to sleep. He also said "Freeze" and Paloma froze. He tried to put me to sleep but I phased out and it didn't work. He was working with this big green guy with a snake tattooed on his face. I didn't see who was driving the car."

The kid - whom Logan didn't recognize - came back with the kit. He opened it and rummaged around until he found the smelling salts. He put the rest of the kit down on the floor, and popped one of the smelling salt capsules underneath Bobby's nose. Logan flinched at the ammonia scent, but Bobby, who had it straight under his nose, jerked awake so violently he nearly fell out of the chair. "Hey … what the hell?" he asked, steadying himself and looking around. He looked up at Logan curiously. "You're back?"

Why was everyone surprised he was back? Did they think he'd left for good? Oh, wait. Yeah, they might have. The whole killing Jean thing. "No, I'm an astral projection," he replied sarcastically.

"We can track Paloma, right?" Kitty said eagerly to Storm.

She frowned, and Logan knew the answer was no, because Cerebro didn't trace non-mutants. Giles said, "I can find her."

Kitty looked at him curiously. "Oh. You're, um …"

"Friend of mine," Logan told her. "Rupert Giles. This is Kitty. Say hi."

"Hi," Kitty said brightly. "What can you do?"

"He's like Wesley," Logan said, and threw a little smirk at Giles as the Englishman tossed him another hard look. He just couldn't help it.

"Ooh," she said, sounding impressed. "Good. We could use you now too."

That made him raise his eyebrows. "Well, it's nice to be needed, I suppose."

"What do you need?" Storm asked him, getting back on topic.

"Only space to work."

She nodded. "Come with me." Storm started down the hall and Giles followed. Logan started after them, but paused to tell Kitty, "Stay here. We'll come get you when we need you."

That made her frown. "Jeeze, that's a nice "great to see you're okay"."

He patted her on the shoulder. "You did good, kid."

That seemed to placate her for the moment, so he took this time to slip away, leaving Bobby asking her, "What happened? Where's Paloma?"

He thought he might be able to help Giles, but he said he didn't need it, so he ended up waiting in the hall with Storm. At least it gave him a chance to ask about something that was bugging him. "The kids think I was really gone for good?"

She shrugged. "It's hard to say. There may have been rumors to that effect, although with telepaths it's impossible to squash any rumors. I do know that you've taken on such a legendary status that the self-defense classes are a nightmare."

"What d'ya mean?"

She fixed him with a stern look, as if he knew what she was talking about and was simply trying her patience. "I mean while you were teaching the class all I heard was complaints about it. You were too hard, too mean, everyone was afraid to ask questions, et cetera. Then as soon as you're gone, it's endless complaints about how the class is no good now that you're not teaching it, that it's "too soft" and it doesn't teach anything they didn't already know." She sighed and rolled her eyes at the fickleness of teenagers. "I let Piotr deal with it in his own way. There's just no way to make some people happy."

"He's teaching the class now?"

"Oh yeah. I'm too busy." The tone of her voice suggested she was actually too fed up.

"I wasn't too hard," he said, attempting to justify himself. "I just figure if someone's tryin' to kill you, why are you holdin' back? It's idiotic. Hell, if they're tryin' to kill you, any hand to hand combat teacher is gonna tell you it's imperative you kill 'em first. If you don't go balls to the wall in a fight the opponent who is both willin' and happy to has you at a disadvantage. Commit fully or go the fuck home. A lot of times if an opponent sees that you're actually prepared to kill 'em, they back down. Some people wanna fight, but they don't wanna go all the way."

Her blue eyes narrowed, remaining frosty. But then she shook her head, clicked her tongue, and looked down the hall, crossing her arms over her chest. "And that's why the kids love you so much."

"You got a problem with me? Besides the obvious? Want me to tell 'em to totally embrace non-violent resistance, no matter who tries to kill them?"

"I would never presume to tell you how to fight, Logan. And what do you mean besides the obvious?"

"You know."

"No I don't."

Was she going to make him say it? Apparently so. He fixed her with a stark glare, hoping she knew how much he hated saying it out loud. Maybe that's what she wanted; maybe she wanted to make sure he was hurting. "I killed Jean. You really gonna tell me part of you doesn't hate me for it? I fuckin' hate me for it."

She flinched and looked down at the floor near his feet, but not at him. "You didn't have a choice," she said so quietly that the distant hum of the air conditioner pretty much drowned her out. They both made a point of not looking at each other.

It almost didn't matter if Storm hated him for it or not; he would never, ever forgive himself. Sure, he did what he had to do, but that was no excuse, or at least not enough of one. It was just another regret to add to the list of regrets he had, a list so huge it felt a bit mind numbing. In fact, if he thought more about it, he'd get suicidal again.

Giles came out to cut the tension. Storm had given him her office to use, and it gave him some privacy. Logan figured he was scrying for a location. "This may be a more complex problem than we thought," Giles said in a rather understated way, "She's being blocked."

"Blocked?" Storm asked.

"How?" Logan asked. "Magic?"

Giles nodded. "I can probably break through the spell, but I'll need to get some things."

"What d'ya need? I'll go get it," Logan offered.

Giles pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a common nervous tic. "In this instance, I think it's best that I go get it. I won't be long."

There was something in his hesitation that suggested that he needed to do this by himself, that this was a magic thing that he simply couldn't do for him. Logan nodded to show he got it, but internally grimaced. Did he have to stay here? Was it wrong of him just to want to get out of here? Being here brought back bad memories. Sure, there were good memories too, but the bad ones, for whatever reason, seemed to linger strongest. He still kept expecting Jean to come along any moment.

Actually it was Piotr who came down the hall next, and he said, "Hey, I heard you were back. How are you doing?"

Logan shrugged. "Okay. Heard you took over the self-defense class."

His big, potato fed Russian farm boy face broke into a big grin. "Yeah, and the kids never stop complaining about how I never teach them the good stuff, like you did."

"Good stuff?"

"Like killing people by breaking their nose."

"Oh. Yeah, I thought Scott's head was gonna explode when he heard about that."

There was an awkward moment as they digested the fact that he was dead too, Piotr's smile fading. He then jerked his head down the hall, and said, "Can I talk to you in private for a moment?"

"Sure." He had a mildly bad feeling about this, but cowards never learned a damn thing. He followed him down to the place where the halls connected, which was often a quiet area when the kids weren't running around. As soon as they got there and a visual scan confirmed the coast was clear, Piotr leaned in and whispered, "I heard you've been fighting the Russian mafia."

"Ah, now, I gotta say those are vicious rumors …"

"If you fight them again, I want in," he continued. "My Uncle Evgeni was killed by those -" he used a delightfully filthy Russian curse that didn't have an English equivalent, possibly for good reason. "I wouldn't mind teaching some of them a lesson."

Wow, a big angry Russian metal guy? That'd be fun. How would they deal with that? It'd be funny to find out. "Next time I get up to somethin', I'll give you a call, get you a front row seat," he told him.

"Good." Piotr seemed really happy. Wow, he really did want to hurt them, didn't he? He was going to tell him not to mention it to Storm, who would probably accuse him of being a bad influence, but Piotr was smart enough not to talk about it.

Logan realized he was kind of uncomfortable waiting for Giles where all the kids could gawk at him, or where Storm could possibly pull him into another conversation he didn't want to have, so he wandered down to his room to see if anything had changed in his absence.

The answer was a big fat no. Clothes were still mussed up in dresser drawers, his closet was almost bare, with a beaten denim jacket and a couple of heavy flannel shirts taking up meager space, the Joseph Hansen paperback he was reading last time he was here still on his nightstand with the matchbook cover bookmark. In the bathroom, his hand towel was still draped partially on the sink. It was like a room caught in time. Maybe if he stayed here long enough, Jean would walk in and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing teaching children how to kill someone. He could then point out that sometimes you had no choice; sometimes people's powers went nuts, and the only way to shut it down was to shut them down. Like her.

He couldn't stay here too long. He was already moping.

He was sifting through the clothes in the drawer, trying to determine if they were all clean by smell, when there was a knock on the door. As he looked, a hand came through the door and waved at him. He sighed. "What is it, Kitty?"

She walked through the door, not bothering to open it. "Sorry to bug you," she said, biting her lower lip nervously. "But I fucked up, didn't I?"

"What? No, kid, you didn't. You got out alive. That's never a fuck up."

"But Paloma got kidnapped. Maybe if I was faster or just attacked them -"

"No," he interrupted. "Fuck no. You didn't know the players or what powers they had, and you were outnumbered."

"That wouldn't have stopped you," she pointed out.

He snorted. "Yeah well, I'm an idiot."

She fixed him with an evil stare that was more appropriate to women ten years older whom he'd also had deeper relationships with, and put her hands on her hips. "Says the guy who can read every language known to man."

"I ain't so good with Sumerian," he offered.

That look continued. She was not amused. That was another effect he had on women.

There was another knock on the door, so unexpected that Kitty actually jumped before turning to face the door. "Wow, it's fucking Grand Central Station, isn't it," Logan grumbled, before barking, "Yeah what?"

"Well, at least I know I have the right room," Giles commented dryly, opening the door. He paused in surprise when he saw Kitty standing there, but gave her a friendly nod before looking at Logan. "I'm not interrupting something, am I?"

"Not really. What's the problem?"

"Why do you assume it's a problem?"

"There's always a problem. It's like gravity or Bob singing - pretty unavoidable."

Giles nodded briefly, conceding the point. "Am I free to talk here?"

"Yeah, Kitty's been through some weird shit with us. Haven't ya?"

Kitty looked between them and shrugged, a bit startled but game to play along. "Uh, yeah. There was that weird thing with Fenrir and the coin. I'm still not sure I understand what happened …"

Giles looked at her with new eyes, impressed. "You faced Fenrir and lived? That's astonishing."

"We teach 'em well here," Logan said. "What's the problem?"

Giles sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "I believe Paloma is a Slayer, but I think there's more going on here than we realize. She was being cloaked by a warlock."

"So we're not dealing with mutants here, just magic assholes?"

Kitty was looking between then, eyebrows scrunching into a vee. "Uh, Slayer?"

They ignored the question for the moment. "For the record, he's not a very good one," Giles continued. "It didn't take me long to break his spell. But from what I could tell before a new, stronger spell went up, they're underground."

"Sewer tunnels or subway tunnels?" Logan asked.

Giles was forced to shrug. "Could be either. But I did get a sense of some powerful dark magic. This might not be as simple as it seems."

"What is?" Logan asked, weary but not surprised.

As if to cement that point, Bobby rushed up outside the open door, and said, "Logan, we have a big problem."

Good lord, he hadn't even been back an entire hour yet, and the shit just kept coming. "What now?"

"Pyro's coming up the walk."

"What?" Kitty exclaimed, more shocked than anyone else. Well, save for Bobby perhaps. "What the hell is he doing here?"

Logan sighed. "I'll go ask him."

"I'll help," Bobby offered.

Logan waved him off as he walked past Giles and Kitty. "Don't need it. A little fire never hurt me. For long."

Besides, he made the kid a promise he had to keep. If John was here to start some shit, he was getting a set of claws through his cerebellum. Logan felt he was nothing if he was not a man of his word.

No matter how grisly it was.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Logan headed down the drive, and as soon as John saw him, he exclaimed, "Jesus! What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I was gonna ask you the same thing," Logan replied. John looked harmless in baggy jeans, an oversized t-shirt, and a beaten up leather jacket that was probably older than he was (you could find interesting stuff at thrift stores), with a knapsack slung over his shoulder. His hair was longer and shaggier, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had when he last saw him in Los Angeles. That wasn't necessarily a good thing.

"I'm not here to cause trouble."

"Damn right you're not."

He attempted a laugh, but it died withering in his throat. "Okay, yeah. Look, Logan, you're the big bad ass, I get it, I've never wanted to fight you, okay?"

"Wouldn't be a fight," he replied, popping the claws on his left hand.

John jumped back a step and held out a hand in a warding off gesture. "Whoa! Damn it, man, would you listen to me? I'm not here to start shit. You can tell if someone's lying, right? Am I lying?"

He paused and scented the air, which was quite easy now that the wind had picked up and big black rain clouds were boiling up overhead. Storm with some back up, presumably. "No."

"Okay then. See?"

"Why are you here?" He may not have been lying about not wanting to fight, but Logan still wasn't about to let him off the hook.

It started down pouring. The sky just opened up and started pelting them with big fat raindrops, one more suited to a monsoon than a spring shower, but it would be difficult for Pyro to attempt to flame on in the middle of a monsoon. He must have known that, because John looked up at the sky and briefly rolled his eyes in disgust. He didn't need two guesses to figure out who was raining on his parade. "I just … if I tell you anything but the truth, yer gonna kill me, aren't you?"

"Might wound. How big's the lie?"

He scoffed, looking down at the gravel drive. "You gotta fucked up sense of humor, dude."

"Who said I was joking?"

John looked up at him sharply, once again trying to tell if he was lying, and not able to tell. Of course he couldn't. Logan knew he couldn't be as old as he was without learning how to keep a deadpan expression on his face. "Umm … I got no place else to go, man. Okay? I'm pathetic. That make you happy?"

Happy wasn't exactly the word, but perversely satisfied would do.

* * *

It was Bobby who was most upset about letting Pyro back in the mansion. Never mind that he was absolutely drenched, and that Logan remained within lunging distance at all times (one swipe and he was done), he was just pissed off. Probably because they used to be friends, and he took his betrayal really personally. Also, did John try and kill him? Logan knew not to take it overly personally at this point, but Bobby probably had to learn about that. Since Giles was still camped out in Storm's office, trying to get a stronger idea of where the hell Paloma was, they were forced to take this discussion to Xavier's old study. Logan hadn't realized it hadn't been used until he walked in, and the dust made him sneeze.

Pryo stood dripping against the far wall, and Logan was leaning against the wall near him, just a bit out of arm's reach, and John occasionally spared him a nervous glance. Bobby sat on the couch openly glowering at him, and Storm sat on the edge of the Processor's old desk, trying to play mediator and failing just a bit. Then Logan yelled for John and Bobby to shut the fuck up, and they did. It did help to have the kids scared of you at times.

The story John told was not a surprise to Logan. It seems after the whole L.A. thing, he felt a little lost. He wasn't interested in the Brotherhood anymore, mainly because they were idiots (and also because Bob told him he wasn't, but John had no memory of that or Bob at all, so Logan didn't mention it), but he wasn't into the "good guy trip" either. But life as a "mundane" didn't suit him either, and he basically ran out of options, so he decided to come back and see if he could get back in here. "What d'ya want me to say? I fucked up?" John said, aiming it at Storm, but probably really saying it to Bobby. "Fine, I fucked up. I felt like you weren't teaching me shit 'cept how not to scare the mundanes -"

"Stop calling them that," Storm said.

"That is bullshit," Bobby snapped, still giving him the stink eye. "You weren't the center of attention so you flounced off like a drama queen."

That pissed John off. His face seemed to collapse into a hard point, and he snapped, "So says the kiss ass teacher's pet. You're really one to talk, you -"

"I punch the next person who utters an insult," Logan interrupted. John and Bobby exchanged evil glances, but fell silent. Storm flashed him a scolding look - okay, so she didn't like him threatening violence against the kids, he got that, but it kept them in line, didn't it?

"You have a dangerous power, John," she told him. "Even teaching you to use it defensively has an inherent danger to it."

"Oh, come on," he protested.

"You control fire. Fire can destroy quickly in a short period of time. You're not an idiot; you know that."

"Don't be so sure about that," Bobby muttered.

"That's one," Logan said. Bobby gave him a startled look, but Logan just remained where he was, arms crossed over his chest, giving him a blank stare. Bobby seemed to cringe into the sofa. Logan wasn't going to actually punch him - well, not unless he absolutely had to - but he liked the fact that it scared them so much. Like he wouldn't pull it.

John looked like he wanted to say something back to Bobby, but Logan's reminder shunted him away from that path. "But at least Magneto taught me how to really use my powers. Here all I ever did was learn how to sculpt candle flames like ice sculptures."

"That's not true," she replied, giving him the scolding look for a change.

"Whatever your excuse is, you compromised the school, and you attacked us, or did you forget that bit, asshole?" Bobby snarled from his hunched position on the brown leather sofa. "How many people have you killed, huh? You keep track? Make little hash marks on your Zippo?"

"Hey, Logan's killed a shitload of people!" John exclaimed defensively, flinging out an arm in his direction. "He used to be an assassin for fuck's sake!" And then John realized what he'd just said about who, and he seemed to wince as he turned his gaze cautiously towards him. "Aw crap, are you gonna hit me?" he asked, with such timid earnestness that Logan actually felt sorry for him.

Bobby looked vaguely startled. "Assassin?" Wow, Rogue hadn't blabbed that about him? Hey, for once, she kept her mouth shut. He supposed he should revise his opinion of her secret keeping skills.

"Logan was brainwashed by a telepath, John," Storm said icily. "You don't have that excuse."

Bobby was looking at Logan wide eyed over the couch. "You were?"

Logan faintly shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

"So you really were an assassin? Wow, I thought that was just gossip." He chewed on that for a moment, then sat back the way he was. "Explains how you ran through all those soldiers in the mansion."

"It also explains why he can kick all our asses," John said, still cringing away slightly.

"How do you know?" Logan asked. He meant about the assassin bit, not being able to kick all their asses.

John seemed to understand what he was asking. "Magneto told me. He said you were a mutant killer, that you killed way above your power set, although he wasn't really sure how since you weren't very -" he paused suddenly.

"Smart?" Logan guessed. "I know what Lensher thinks of me."

John nodded. "He said he figured Xavier taking you in either proved he had totally lost his mind or was finally wising up. He wasn't sure which."

"We're not discussing Logan, we're discussing you," Storm interjected. "And we have no reason to trust you, John. I'm all for second chances, but what guarantee do we have that you won't simply abandon us again when you're back on your feet ?"

John made a gesture that meant nothing, both exasperated and vague, and said, "I dunno, except … yeah, I fucked up, and I'm sorry. It's just Magneto taught me more about what I could do than anybody. And for a while there he kinda made sense."

"But now you decided he doesn't, just because he's a depowered old man?" Bobby replied scathingly. "What the hell changed your mind? Poverty?"

"Tone it down," Logan warned him. He knew that what had changed John's worldview so drastically was Bob - John thought he was a god until he met Bob, and Bob told him in no uncertain terms that no, he wasn't, and wouldn't actually last a picosecond against a real one, and while he couldn't remember that at all, he kept the knowledge that he had made a major miscalculation and reached far beyond his grasp - but he wasn't about to say that in front of John. Or Bobby even, who might mock him with it someday.

Storm raised a questioning eyebrow at him. She knew there was something he wasn't saying. "Do you have something more to add, Logan?"

"Put him on probation," he replied. "I'll watch him."

"What?" Bobby exclaimed, sitting up straight. "You can't be serious."

"Everybody deserves a second chance. Besides, if he betrays us again, he's dead, and he knows it." Logan looked at John. "You got that, yeah?"

"Like a cold," John admitted sullenly, looking down at the pattern his dripping hair was making on the Oriental carpet.

"Logan," Storm said. "What have I said about making death threats?"

"It's not a threat. I promised him back in L.A. that I would if he ever attacked the kids again. I keep my word."

"But he's -" Bobby began, sputtering, words temporarily abandoning him in his apoplexy.

"You think I can't kill him? You think I wouldn't?"

Bobby fell silent. No and no seemed to be the answers, and they were the right ones. After all, he'd already killed Jean - that pretty much meant he had the wherewithal to kill everyone. After an awkward moment, John asked quietly, "What d'ya mean probation?"

"You do what I say when I say it, and when I give you the rules, you follow them. Any deviation will be unpleasant for you. Do good and I'll dial it down. Do bad, and if yer still sucking air, yer out on your ass. Comprende?"

John scowled, but gave him a sarcastic salute. "Yes sir. Do I have to wear an orange jumpsuit?"

"Keep up the 'tude, yeah."

"John, Bobby, could you leave us please? Logan and I have to talk in private," Storm said. Logan wasn't wildly concerned. As soon as he told her Bob was behind John's change of heart, she'd know that he wasn't about to flip on them again. But perhaps she just wanted to lecture him about threatening the kids.

"Where am I supposed to go?" John asked.

Logan looked across the room at Storm. "His old room taken?"

"Not at the moment."

"Go there. And stay there 'til I come get you," Logan told him. "Open the door to no one but me or Storm. Got it?"

He scoffed. "I'm under house arrest?"

"Do you really think talkin' back to me is the way forward?" he countered.

John rolled his eyes again, but his shoulders slumped in resignation.

"I'll keep an eye on him and make sure he gets there," Bobby said, standing up and narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

Before John could protest, Logan said, "No, you'll go, and you'll stay away from him. Piotr can make sure he gets back to his room. He's even fireproof when he's metal, so don't think you're the only fireproof person around here, Bobby."

Bobby frowned, and huffed a breath through his nose like a horse, but knew better than to say anything. The same couldn't be said for John. "You're not fireproof, y'know," he said, looking at Logan.

He stared at him flatly. "No, but I heal from third degree burns. Can you heal from a decapitation?" John visibly blanched, while behind him, over his shoulder, Storm flared her eyes at him for making such a threat. It wasn't a threat - it was a point. "Didn't think so."

John shook his head. "You just don't fuck around, do ya? Aren't you supposed to be a good guy? Good guys are wimps."

"I'm a bad good guy," Logan admitted.

There was a rapid knock on the door, and out of habit Logan barked, "What?" It must have caught John off guard, as he jerked to a straighter posture.

The door opened a crack, and Kitty peeked inside. "Sorry to bother you, but I think something's happened to Mr. Giles."

That made Logan feel like someone smacked him on the back of the head. "What do you mean something's happened to him?"

"He, um, asked me to stand outside the door of the office, and not to come in under any circumstances," she reported anxiously. "But there was … a yelp I guess, and a sound like breaking glass, and a puff of smoke and light came under the door. I knocked and asked him if he was all right, but there was no answer. I thought about looking in, but he was pretty adamant about me not going in; he said I should get you if something went wrong." She then scratched her head, and added, "He said you were Bob's. What did that mean?"

Oh fuck. What was Giles doing that was so risky only an avatar would be safe? "Figure of speech. Stay here," he said, heading out the door. He heard Storm take a breath to say something, but he looked back at her and said, "Later." He'd have to hope she'd understood, or he'd be looking down the barrel of a lightning bolt enema.

He ran down the corridor and braced himself for a fight before bursting into Storm's office.

The first thing he was hit with was a smell like burning rocks and hair; he made a noise of disgust and shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to clear it from his nose. Giles was sprawled out on the floor beside a ring of salt on the carpet, which he knew from past experience was a protection circle. He looked for a burned spot or broken glass and didn't see any, which seemed like a bad sign. There was a bit of blood trickling from Giles's nose, so he knew he was alive, just unconscious. But why? Did something attack him? Was it still here?

A quick search of the office seemed to suggest that if it was here, it was invisible, and he couldn't detect it in any other way. He knelt beside him and patted his face. "Giles? Hey, Rupert, what the fuck did you do?"

No answer at all; Giles didn't move. He suddenly wondered if there was a doctor in the house.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Kneeling on the floor, Logan caught a whiff of an odd scent: it was tea, blood, wormwood, and honey mixed together. He traced it to a small wooden cup tipped on its side, most of the liquid soaked into the carpet in a big dark blot, but there was still a bit in it, so he scooped the cup up and flicked the liquid on his face. "Giles, what the fuck were you doing?"

The liquid did the trick. His head jerked away from it, and he finally opened his eyes. Once he was able to focus, he said, "Bugger."

"What the fuck man? I thought you were scrying or something."

Giles sat up, wiping the flecks of liquid from his face and grimacing at the blood coming from his nose. "I did that the first time. They were expecting that."

"So what the hell were you doin'?"

"I was talking to a … friend of mine in another dimension. He owed me a favor, and I figured he could find out who was using dark magic in the area."

"Besides you?"

He sighed, and seemed to take a moment to make sure that they were alone in the room, and that his head was still attached to his body. "Has anyone ever told you you have a very British sense of sarcasm?"

"I'm Canadian; it's considered British with a hick accent."

"I had no idea."

Logan sat back on his haunches, not ready to let this go. "I know that's a protection circle, and any spell using blood is a powerful one. So spill already. I know you were talking with a demon."

Giles gave him a look that seemed caught somewhere between disbelief and disappointment. "I was trying to borrow his eyes."

Logan mulled that for a moment, if only to make sure he'd heard him right. "Did you take a shot to the head? That didn't make sense."

Giles shifted so he was sitting slumped against the desk. He seemed okay, but clearly whatever happened had taken the wind out of his sails. "It does with this type of demon. We were unable to reach a suitable compromise."

"Meaning it attacked you."

"It tried. The circle held."

"You still got hurt."

"It tried very hard."

"So where does that leave us? Square one?"

"No. I tricked it into telling me what I wanted to know. They're somewhere near the Canal Street Station."

"Subway tunnel?" Although it sounded like a question, it really wasn't one. "That's why it tried to hurt you so badly, huh?"

"Nobody likes a smart ass. Help me up, would you?"

"Sure." Logan got up and reached a hand down, which Giles took gingerly, and he hauled him up to his feet. He held on a moment to let him steady himself, and Giles pretended he didn't. As soon as he seemed ready, Logan asked, "So how we gonna do this? Reconnaissance?"

"That would be the first step. We need to know how many people we're facing and who we're going up against. But the problem is reconnaissance will be dangerous. They'll expect me to attempt to do it remotely through a spell, so doing it in person will be a surprise, but that will present its own perils."

"We keep it short and sweet," Logan said. "I'll do it."

Giles shook his head. "Not alone. They're using dark magic, and there may be traps even you can't detect. I'll go with you. In fact, that girl, the intangible one, she might be useful as well."

Logan wasn't thrilled about it, but he knew he had a point. A girl who could walk through walls without tripping a single alarm was born for reconnaissance. "Yeah, maybe. She seemed immune to that guy on the street too."

"If he's a decent spellcaster, that won't hold," Giles warned him. "He wasn't expecting her to become intangible. Next time, he might be ready."

"Shit."

"Is she able to fight her way out, if worse comes to worst?"

Giles didn't mean just fight, he didn't mean punch a few people. He meant kill; he knew it from the way he was looking at him. It wasn't something they actually had to discuss - they could both kill, they both had. Giles may have looked benign, and oftentimes was, but he did have a surprising badass streak about him that caught most people off guard. "She can fight, but I don't think she has it in her to go all the way. She's a sweet kid."

Giles straightened his glasses and looked away, lips thinning to a hard line. "I don't need to tell you that's not especially helpful."

"No, you don't." But as he thought about it for a moment, he realized there might be a way to even it up. "What if we made it a quartet? I know someone who has no qualms about hurting people. We'll keep 'em in reserve."

Giles' look softened slightly. "A back up weapon?"

"Exactly."

The Watcher nodded in agreement. "Good. You don't happen to still have those fetishes Bob gave you, do you?"

When he said fetish his mind went to a very strange place, but he quickly remembered its other meaning. "You mean the necklaces Ganesha blessed? I think I got a couple stashed away in a drawer."

"Good, get them. I have a feeling we're going to need all the help we can get."

Wow, that was so not very promising.

* * *

Logan returned to his room to grab the necklaces, and as always when handling the simple leather cords with the little ceramic elephant pendants, he felt as silly as hell. He didn't know if they'd even work in a case like this. According to Bob, they "repelled entropy", which supposedly improved luck, but as far as he knew it only worked against gods who specialized in randomness. How it worked in a real life situation he had no idea.

On his way back to Storm's office, he stopped to knock on a certain door. After a moment, John opened it. "Yeah? Are you gonna make me wear an ankle bracelet now?"

Logan scowled at him. "I told you not to open the door to anyone but me and Storm."

"Hey, I knew it was you," he protested. "No one else knocks on the door like they're gonna bust it down."

Logan didn't believe that, but he didn't feel he had the time to argue with him. "Whatever; don't do it again. Right now I need you to follow my orders precisely - we're goin' on a field trip."

"Oh joy," he replied sarcastically, throwing himself back down on the bed, slamming his back up against the headboard. An iPod sat on the bedside table, something tinny drifting out of its earbuds. Logan knew he could identify it if he concentrated on it, but he didn't give a shit. "Where we goin', the cardboard box factory?"

"Recon assignment. I need you to hang back and wait while Giles, Kitty, and I check out some unused subway tunnels."

John gave him a funny look. "Are you serious?" He then scoffed. "What am I sayin'? You're hardly Jon Stewart, are you? Why the hell are we checkin' out tunnels?"

"To find someone." He wasn't going to tell him any more than he needed to know.

John frowned and then rolled his eyes, getting that fact loud and clear. "Fine, keep it a surprise. But why the hell am I supposed to hang back?"

"You're insurance."

John cocked his head, eying him suspiciously. "Insurance?"

"In case we get up to our necks in shit."

It took him a moment, but understanding dawned in his eyes. "Y'mean ..?"

Logan nodded. "If I give you the high sign, then burn baby, burn."

Something dark and unpleasant sparkled deep in his eyes. It was eagerness. "You really mean it?"

"I give you the sign, you burn that motherfucker down."

He hopped to his feet, suddenly quite chipper. "Now that's what I'm talkin' about. If you were here when I got to the mansion in the first place, I'd have never left."

Logan gave him an unimpressed look. Bob changed him from a bad guy to a good guy, but the fundamental problem of Pyro was still there. Bob did a surgical strike when he should have done a full out lobotomy. (But the same could be argued about him, he supposed.) "Got everything you need?"

He flipped the Zippo up in the air and caught it with a well practiced, casual gesture. "Oh yeah. Let's roll."

He had a feeling he would regret this. But he was a natural balance for Kitty. She really didn't want to hurt anything, and Pyro clearly got a kick out of hurting people.

Yeah, he was either going to be a problem now or later. He just didn't know what he was going to do with him.

* * *

Before they left, Giles explained the purpose of the mission as best he could, leaving out some key details, such as looking for a black magician and magical booby traps, as those would be harder to explain than they were actually worth. Getting Pyro to put on the necklace -_"What the fuck's with this dorky thing?" _- was hard enough.

Giles teleported them to a side street about a block away from the subway station, and it was empty at the time of arrival, which was a good thing. Kitty and John both needed a moment to recover from the teleporting lag, although John took it harder than Kitty. If he was going to complain about everything, Logan was going to knock him out and leave him on a subway platform.

They went down in the subway, which wasn't too busy, but in New York that didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. He and Giles had already worked out their pattern of attack before bringing the kids into this: Giles would cast subtle spells, trying to figure out where the magic was, and Logan would rely on his more conventional senses to pick it up … if he could. The problem - and it was a huge one - was his senses could get easily overwhelmed in something like a subway. Too many people crammed into too small a space, leaving questionable hygiene in their wake. It was the equivalent of walking into a sewer for him. But on the plus side, he'd gotten kind of used to that, so he figured he'd adapt.

The smells and sounds hit him like a baseball bat to the face, but after a couple of minutes, once they got past the turnstiles and into the subway station proper, he was accustomed to it, and started parsing smells as best he could.

Because he was concentrating so hard on the smells, he inadvertently had his game face on, and he only realized this because the otherwise oblivious New Yorkers, who had no problem plowing or bumping into Giles, Kitty, or John, seemed to go out of their way to make sure they didn't bump into him. Even hardened, cynical New Yorkers sensed the danger of him, and avoided him like the alcoholic guy who smelled strongly of his own piss. It was probably the company he deserved to be in.

By the time they reached the main platform, Giles leaned over and whispered, "I'm picking up magic within the tunnel itself."

"Seriously?" Well, that made sense. They would hardly be casting spells and sacrificing goats in front of the D train. Eventually, someone would notice and complain. "As soon as the train goes by I'll duck in and have a look."

"Duck in where?" Kitty whispered.

Logan pointed down the subway tunnel. She looked down it with a scowl, as if trying to make out something in the darkness, and then asked, "You want to go now?"

"You're intangible, not invisible," Logan reminded her. "Let's just wait a couple minutes. The train's comin'."

"How do you know that?" John asked.

"I can hear it."

He scoffed, and Kitty looked uncomfortable. She knew he was back and back on their side, but she didn't look thrilled by the prospect. "The fuck you can. Those things are louder than shit, and I don't hear it."

"Wait a minute." It was loud in the subway, with unintelligible announcements, people shouting at each other and into their cell phones (sometimes both), with others listening to music from radios or iPods that seemed oddly projective, although the sounds echoed and caromed strangely off curved and flat tiled surfaces. In fact, Logan was kind of glad that explosions and gunshots and various battlefields had allowed him to get somewhat inured to noise, because that's how bad it was.

Finally the distant, hollow roar of the subway started coming down the tunnel, the vibrations coming through the platform, and Giles asked, "You really heard it that far away?"

"It was mainly smell," he admitted. When the air started to take on a heavier concentration of oil and fuel, something was coming, and if it wasn't a subway train, it was one fucking big truck with a really funny engine.

For about ten minutes, it was chaos and confusion and the height of noise and smell and jostling (although, again, he was deliberately avoided more than anyone else) as people got off the train and got on it, and once the train took off again, it was still noisy and weird for about two minutes. Then the crowd thinned out, the smells thinned (much less, but hey), and fewer witnesses were hanging around to watch them. He shared a glance with Giles, who simply nodded, and then they walked to the end of the platform closest to the tunnel.

Logan jumped down first, and the others followed in rough order, and while people saw them do this, no one saw them who actually gave a shit. That was one of the good things about New York City general indifference - just because they saw you do it and knew it was wrong didn't automatically translate into them giving a shit. That was no longer just a New York thing, though; that attitude was starting to spread around the world.

Almost as soon as he passed into the tunnel, his skin started to crawl, and he smelled something … off. It was the usual expected stuff - rat droppings, human piss, lots of oil and spray paint, cockroaches, garbage, spilled malt liquor - but then there was something else, an undertone of blood and hemlock and sulfur. "You gettin' this?" Logan muttered.

Giles nodded, and made a small gesture with his hand that indicated he was spellcasting. "Yeah. There's been extensive casting in this area." And by casting he was sure he didn't mean fishing.

"So what are we looking for exactly?" Pyro asked, flicking his lighter on and off, a flare of light with a metallic click both proceeding and following it. Logan wondered where his wrist igniters were, and assumed they broke or simply got lost along the way. "Evidence that that chick has been here or something?" Kitty had caught him up on the Paloma story before they teleported here. She may have not been crazy about having him here, but she was nothing if not fair. Which was why Logan doubted she had it in her to kill.

"They're hiding out around here somewhere," Logan said, keeping his voice low. "Would you quit it with the lighter? You're fucking up my night vision."

"You have night vision? I thought that was Marcus and that weird SoCal Angel guy."

Logan stopped and turned to glare at him, and John almost walked right into him. "You'd have night vision too if you quit flipping on that fucking lighter."

He growled it out a bit angrier than necessary, and he knew it because John took an instant step back, and Logan picked up a sour whiff of fear. "Yeah, okay. No need to be so crabby about it." It was a good thing he was still scared of him, or he'd have no control over him at all.

"Oh no," Giles whispered, so softly Logan barely heard it.

He turned back towards him quickly, keeping his voice at the same pitch. "What?"

"I think someone's opened up a dimensional rift down here." Giles was holding something in his hand that was glowing faintly yellow. Logan only knew it was from Giles's bag of Watcher tricks.

"Dimensional rift? What kind of dimension are we talking about here?"

"I don't know, but I can't imagine it would be a good one. Also, whoever they have is much more powerful than I thought."

"Don't tell me you're outmatched."

"I think I might be." He tucked the glowing rock back in his pocket, and said, "I hate to say it, but I think a hasty retreat is called for."

"Fuck, I hate those."

"What's this Star Trek bullshit?" John asked.

"What do you mean dimension?" Kitty asked nervously. "Is this another god thing?"

"What d'ya mean god thing?" John instantly replied. "What, did an evangelist take her?"

Giles said something, but Logan didn't catch it, because he was suddenly distracted by a smell. It was sudden, sharp, and horrible, like rotting meat left under a heat lamp and pissed on by a thousand cats. He wince and his eyes watered as bile started crawling up his throat.

"Logan, what is it?" Giles asked, grabbing his arm. How could they not smell that?

But then they must have, as someone - Kitty or John, he couldn't actually tell - made a gagging noise, and Giles let him go to clamp a hand over his nose and mouth.

Logan swallowed back the bile and started to get inured to the smell, so his eyes stopped watering. He straightened up, and thought he saw the darkness start to shift before he heard a growl that was so deep it sounded like an avalanche, and he felt the ground beneath their feet tremble in response. Oh shit.

"What the hell was that?" John asked, his voice finally pitched at a whisper.

"Run," Logan told them, popping his claws and taking a step forward, hoping the thing wasn't as big as he thought he was.

Because if he was right, it was taking up most of the tunnel. And he suspected it wasn't even all here yet.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Logan hated the big demons. Not just because they were big, although that was certainly a factor. No, he mainly hated the big ones because it was a chore to kill them. There was so much surface area, and usually only one spot or two where they were genuinely vulnerable. Unless you knew exactly where the sweet spot was, you could be jabbing for hours.

The thing lunged at him since he was in the front, and Logan lunged to meet it, his claws slashing deep into its Moray eel like face. It was like cutting through blubber, although it smelled like a sewer full of rotting meat. It reared back and opened a mouth you could have parked a Buick in, possessing small teeth as large as his forearms, and fangs as big as his torso. It had hot breath like a tire fire in an abattoir.

A gout of flame surged over his head and splashed against its distressingly dildo like head, and Logan saw its four silver eyes, each as big as serving platters, contract slightly in the sudden brightness, hissing like a pneumatic drill press cranked up to eleven, as John shouted, "What the fuck is this thing?!"

Logan saw the slashes on its "snout" heal over like they'd never existed in the first place, and even though Logan was starting to sweat under the heat of the flames spilling over the demon's head, it was starting to ignore it. He thought its skin was starting to blacken … but no, it was hardening; he didn't smell burning. "Giles, what the fuck is this?" he shouted, as he heard Giles cast a spell that seemed to slam up against the thing like a (mostly) invisible force field. Logan could see coruscation at the edges, and he stood just beyond it, still blocking the way with his body and his bared claws, but he knew his thing could swallow him whole in a second and take care of the others in less than two the second all their barriers failed.

"I think it's a chimera."

"The mutant?" Kitty asked, shocked.

"No, an actual chimera. A ravenous beast who's virtually unkillable."

"Virtually?" Logan asked. "What's the weakness?"

"All magical. I'll need to access a coven to help me." The chimera seemed to butt its head up against the magical field, and Logan saw those tiny bits of light start to flicker. Holy shit, it could actually fight magic?

"It's gotta have something else. What if I carve its fucking eyes out?"

"You'll annoy it for three seconds. Its skin adapts to everything." Giles had obvious strain in his voice. He was rapidly running out of strength; he didn't have the power to hold the chimera back. That's why he needed a coven. "John, Kitty, run. Get out of here and try to get as many people out of the station as you can. Logan and I will hold it here as long as we can."

"Evacuate the station?" John repeated. "What, it's gonna fuckin' eat people?"

Logan knew it would be a bloodbath. This thing was huge, and if Giles was right, he could spend all day ripping open its skin, gouging its eyes out, and it wouldn't even pause to flick him off. Then he had a brilliant idea. No, scratch that - it would only be brilliant if it worked. If it didn't, they remained fucked, but fucked with a brief false sense of hope. "Kitty, to me." In a moment, she was there. She smelled terrified, but she was an X-Man, so she wasn't going anywhere. You had to love that innocent, stupid kind of bravery. He retracted a set of claws and grabbed her hand, saying, "We're gonna run through that thing. When we hit the gut, you let go of me and keep running."

Flames reflected in her now huge dark eyes. "What? Logan, do you know -"

"Yeah, I do," he interrupted. "You let go of me, damn it. That's an order. Giles, hold the field as long as you can. C'mon Kitty, do your thing." And he'd barely finished saying that before taking a deep breath and running towards the chimera. She must have phased them out, as he didn't feel the magical field Giles was projecting, and while the chimera opened its mouth to swallow them up, he didn't feel that either.

If this didn't work, he'd feel like the world's biggest idiot. But at least there was a decent chance he might not live long enough to be truly humiliated.

* * *

"Is he letting that thing eat him?" John asked, still sending out flames against the chimera. Actually it was the same single stream of flame, kept in constant roaring life, near his hands but never actually touching them. Giles thought it was fascinating on a basic level, but he didn't have time for a good visual scan, because it felt like he was vomiting up his very life force to hold this thing back. He was getting dizzy, and he was sweating so much he was half convinced he was melting.

"Not exactly," Giles replied, trying hard to focus and ignore the vertigo. He figured out what Logan had planned the second he grabbed Kitty's hand, but he didn't know if it would work. Chimeras weren't native to this plain, and not much was known about them, except they were vicious demons that would eat anything and anyone in their path and were extraordinarily difficult to kill or contain. All the Watchers tomes said about them was basically if you ever encountered one, run, because it was better to die pretending to do something. Still, he had to credit Logan for trying something, even if it did end with him being digested by a demon. Could it eat adamantium?

Kitty appeared out the other side of the thing, but she was barely visible, and must have remained intangible, as the chimera thrashed against the spell he was using, and she'd have been crushed if she was solid. She came back to them, looking stricken. "Did I kill him? Do you think I killed him?"

"Logan killed himself," John told her. "You had nothin' to do with it." A cold but wholly accurate assessment.

The ground felt like it was shifting under his feet, and his vision was tunneling, starting to become a bright point. And that's when the chimera made a funny noise.

Now he didn't know what a chimera sounded like, so he couldn't say for certain that it was funny, it just sounded strange. Sort of like a wet burp, and then it began thrashing in earnest, crashing up against the walls of the subway so violently brick dust rained down on them. There was a thick, wet noise, and claws popped through its skin somewhere in the midsection of its body and ripped down like a zipper. Logan stuck his head out and gulped in air before continuing to tear the thing to pieces from the inside out. Giles had already dropped the field, mainly because he had to. He had to lean against the tunnel wall to stay on his feet.

"Holy shit!" John exclaimed, jumping back. Blood that smelled like a charnel house splattered the far walls, and tissue as dense and rubbery as truck tires flew around in chaotic spurts.

Giles felt Kitty latch onto his arm, clearly alarmed, but also trying to support him. "Are you all right?"

He really wasn't sure how to answer that question. He considered and discarded several potential answers before deciding on, "I'm fine." Sometimes the blandest answer saved a ton of explanation.

Finally there was a huge wet plop, and Logan emerged from the broken center of the beast, covered in gore, shoulders hunched and hands hanging loosely at his sides. For very good reason.

It wasn't just gore he was dripping but digestive acid, which bubbled when it splashed on the ground. That was why his hair and his clothes appeared to be missing, and metal glinted silver where his fingertips should have been. Much of his skin appeared red, but only because it was actually eaten away, and in fact some of the darker patches were exposed muscles. Some of his skin was visibly growing back, but not all of it, not yet. Giles had no idea how he was standing up; he must have been in so much pain. Stomach acid was one of the most corrosive liquids around, even when it wasn't demonic.

"Oh my god," Kitty gasped, gagging slightly.

"Is it dead?" Logan rasped. His voice sounded raw and wrong, suggesting that acid had damaged his vocal cords at some point and they hadn't completely healed yet. It looked like his eyes were just finishing the healing process.

Giles pushed himself off the wall and looked at what was left of the chimera. It wasn't completely cut in half, but enough of it was that it wasn't healing, and it certainly wasn't moving. It was possible it could heal, he supposed, but it would take ages. It would most likely be hit by a subway train before that could happen. "If it's not, it's wishing it was."

Logan gave a single nod of acknowledgement, not looking at him, resolutely staring at the far wall. For a single second he thought maybe that it was embarrassment, but no, Logan never seemed terribly ashamed by nudity or spasms of extreme violence. Giles realized he was just trying to hold his composure together, trying very hard not to scream. He'd just bathed in acid and was missing an awful lot of his skin; it was understandable.

"See?" John said. "This kinda shit is exactly why I never wanted to fight him."

"I will never watch Alien the same way again," Kitty said, looking at the gaping wound where the beast's stomach used to be, a hand over her mouth.

"Dude, should we … do we need to wrestle you up some clothes or somethin'?" John asked, looking at Logan sidelong. Giles wasn't sure if he just didn't want to see Logan naked, or if he didn't want to see him naked and partially skinned. It was a disturbing sight. Well, not the naked part alone, unless you were a rather insecure man.

"I think I have enough in me for one more teleport," Giles lied. One more teleportation spell would probably knock him out, but the truth was they had to get out of here now. Yes, the watchdog demon was now dead or as good as dead, but there was still the problem that he was dealing with one powerful sorcerer or a group of them, and they had to know they were here now. And all the noise would bring regular authorities - police - to the scene.

"But what about the girl?" John asked. "Weren't we here to rescue her?" He wasn't so much gung ho to rescue her as obviously confused.

"We're coming back," Logan rumbled, his voice a bit better, but still more gravelly than it usually was. It made it sound ominous, but then again it was.

When they came back, they were coming back with an army.

* * *

Giles kindly teleported them back to the mansion and landed in a hallway, not far from Logan's room. He noticed Giles passed out the second they materialized, but he expected that, so he wasn't surprised. Giles looked sweaty and pale, like splotchy oatmeal, and figured he'd pushed himself beyond his limits. But he knew the feeling.

He left John and Kitty to deal with it as he went to his room and ducked into his bathroom, grabbing a towel and shoving it in his mouth before screaming. The funny thing was, when his dermal layers were originally eaten away, it only hurt for a moment - when the nerves were destroyed, there was no pain no matter how much flesh and muscle mass he lost subsequently. He felt weird, he knew his body was being eaten away and he was going into shock, and he was on the verge of some synaptic failure, but he also knew if he passed out he was dead (or, as Giles said, he would wish he was dead). He bulled through it, and it wasn't so bad.

But then his nerve endings started to heal, grow back along with his muscles and skin. There was no word for the pain. Agony seemed far too anemic a term. He felt like he was on fire, burning from the inside out, and the more he healed the worse it got. And his skin was still exposed in several areas, and air on naked nerves hurt like broken glass being vigorously scrubbed into an infected wound. It even hurt to scream, as his vocal cords hadn't totally healed yet either. Tears of pain trailed over raw skin, and the salt in them burned him, causing even more pain. There was no way to win here. He wished he would pass out, but he knew that wasn't in the cards. He never seemed to pass out when he wanted to.

He decided to step under the shower and wash the stinking blood and remaining acid off, even though the water pelting down on him hurt too. Good thing he still had the towel to scream into. He sat in the corner of the tub and watched the water, tinged pink with his blood, swirl down the drain. He tried to make it a Zen exercise, tried to focus on it and distance himself from his body.

Eventually he got numb to the pain, as he thought he would, but the water was getting cold. He got out gingerly and wrapped a towel around himself, looking at himself in the mirror. The hair on his head was already starting to grow back, it looked like he had a severe buzz cut, his hair more a suggestion than a reality, and he had the beginning shadow of some stubble on his face. Good - he looked really funny bald. Not all his skin had healed yet, but he had most of his fingertips and toes back.

He went out into his room and stopped short, as there was a woman there he'd never seen before. She was petite, maybe five four in height, no more than a hundred and forty pounds, somewhere in her early thirties, with a dark complexion and sloe eyed beauty that suggested she was of Middle Eastern origin. Her glossy black hair was cut in a very short bob, and she was wearing a white coat that gave away her status here. "You're the new doctor." It wasn't a question.

She dipped her head once. "Shaheen Khoury." She had a vaguely French accent. Algerian? "Your bloody footprints seemed to indicate you needed help."

"I gotta healing factor, I'll be okay eventually."

"I can help," she said, and stared at him in an oddly intense way.

He was about to ask her what her problem was when he felt his skin crawling. He looked down at his arm, and saw the skin seemed to be growling back faster than normal. He watched one of his fingertips reconstruct itself in record time. He looked at her curiously. "How're you doing that?"

She relented in her intense stare, and admitted, "It's my utterly useless mutant power. I can increase the intensity of other mutant's powers. I knew I was positive for the X gene, but I used to think I had it but no abilities until I came here." She shrugged and grimaced in embarrassment. "I must say, I still feel a bit cheated. But at least I don't feel pain, and there's that possible immortality thing." She paused very briefly. "Are there any painkillers that work on you at all?"

"Um … if you got ketamine, you could give me an overdose. It might make me feel okay for a couple minutes. Are you really immortal?"

Again he got the shrug. "Preliminary tests indicate my cells have stopped aging. I don't know if I have any ketamine. How do you feel about Oxycontin?"

She seemed very low key and blasé about everything; a female Vulcan. Actually, he found that kind of nice. "That's an opioid, right? I'm pretty immune to most of 'em."

"Well, we can try it. I'll find the strongest dose I can and double it. You can't die from a drug overdose, can you?"

"Haven't yet. So I'd think not."

"Okay then. Be right back."

"How's Giles?"

She paused by the door. "Exhausted, probably dehydrated, but he should be fine. Did you really allow yourself to be eaten by a big sewer monster?"

That was presumably what John or Kitty said. It sounded more like John. "It was in the subway, actually."

She looked at him impassively, then nodded, as if that confirmed her suspicion. "Keep that up, and you'll lose your shot at immortality. Not that I blame you. You probably should increase your fluid intake, but try to make at least half of it not beer." And with that she left the room as abruptly and mysteriously as she had entered it. Odd woman. He could grow to like her.

He got dressed quickly, just throwing on some jeans, and was pulling on a t-shirt when there was a knock at his door. "Yeah." He was expecting Shaheen with the drugs, but it was Storm who came in, and did a double take looking at him. He grimaced, and said, "I know, I look funny with short hair. It'll grow back in a few hours."

"You were really digested?"

"Partly. I started cutting my way out as soon as I got solid. I was holding my breath, y'know. Needed to get air. Figured I had under a minute to get air and get out of the acid before I was totally fucked."

Storm's look continued to be one of utter disbelief. "And that was plan A?"

It was his turn to echo Shaheen's disinterested shrug. "Didn't have a lot of time. It was do somethin' drastic or have it kill a lot of people."

"But you didn't know if it would be vulnerable inside its skin. What if you were wrong?"

Again, he could only shrug. "Then maybe I bought a minute or two for the others. I had to try something."

Storm pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed impatiently. "You are the craziest son of a bitch I have ever met."

"I get that a lot."

She gave him an odd look that was half stern and half kind, like she wasn't sure if she wanted to pat him on the back or pimp slap him across the parking lot. That too was something he got a lot. She shook her head. "What am I going to do with you?" He was about to answer, but she held up her hand and said, "That was rhetorical. Giles is conscious and he wants to talk to you. He said he needs to do something, but since he can stand up at the moment without passing out, he says he needs you to do it. Which sounds faintly ominous."

"Prob'ly is." Well there was no sense in hiding it from her, especially since she'd worked most of it out herself already.

She smirked at his admission. "So now you're going to be honest. Are you sure you're up to this? Don't be macho, you just got half eaten by a chimera."

"I'm good. Let's go." That disbelieving look returned to her blue eyes again. "Really, I am. The Doc helped." His pain was down to a very tolerable level, and most of his skin was back. Oh, he could feel a patch missing on his back, but it was covered with the shirt.

She seemed to reluctantly concede the point, but he could tell she hadn't wanted to. She turned her back to him, her hand on the doorknob, and seemed to pause for an excessive amount of time. Then she said, in a voice so low he could barely hear her, "I don't hate you, Logan. Jean loved you; I could never hate you." As soon as she finished the sentence she was out the door and gone. Was it to avoid discussing it further, or to give him a moment to recover? He didn't know and didn't care, as her words stung him for a moment. Had Jean told her that, or was she just guessing? He knew they were close, he just didn't know how close.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over his dresser, his strangely naked face displaying a bleak sort of hurt with no hair to hide it behind. He frowned at himself. "You can take acid burns but you can't take a broken heart? Yer a fuckin' pussy."

It was what he needed to hear right now, as bizarre as it was. He affected a slightly disgruntled expression and headed out after Storm.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Giles was in a room at the end of the hall, laying flat out on the bed. Logan had no idea who used to be in here, but he smelled a lingering trace of someone who was definitely not Giles. Probably a student, but he didn't recognize the scent. "You didn't want to get carted down to sick bay, huh?" Logan guessed.

Giles nodded faintly. His head was propped up on pillows almost as pale as he currently was. "I do have some dignity. Best to deploy it when I can."

"Use it or lose it," Logan agreed, and ran a hand over his bristly head. "Luckily I lost mine a long time ago."

"Dignity's terribly overrated."

"What am I doin' for you, Rupert?"

He reached blindly for the nightstand and groped along until he felt and grabbed a piece of paper. It was a note from Storm's desk - it had an X-Men logo on it and everything. Logan had no idea they had a logo, but why not? They had swoopy leather/Kevlar suits too. Why not a logo? Maybe they even had their own font. He never got the memos on these things. "I need you to visit this woman, and tell her Ripper is calling in his favor. Tell her an unknown group has opened up a Hell portal in the Canal Street Subway, and I need all the firepower she can muster."

A glance at the paper showed an address written in surprisingly neat handwriting for a guy who kept passing out. "Who is this woman? And, uh, Ripper?"

He winced in embarrassment. "You're not the only one who has a past he'd rather not discuss. I met her at a rather dark period in my life, and I bent some rules for her. And the last time I knew, she was going by the name Allyson Temple."

"Sounds like a place."

"I told her that, but she made a rather rude suggestion in return. I had to inform her Human spines didn't bend that way."

"Ah, so this is why you're sending me to do it. She's not Human."

He fixed him with a very serious look. With his glasses off, he looked strangely tired and fragile. "It's more than that. I'm hoping she picks up on the residual traces of Bob energy in you and won't try and fuck with you in any respect. She really does like fucking with men, and I don't mean it as a verb."

Logan understood that if the Bob energy in him was a warning, this chick was super bad news. "What is she?"

"She used to be the goddess Ate. Do you know her story?"

"Can't say I do."

"Supposedly she was in the discord and mischief category, and pissed off Zeus enough that he condemned her to Earth. The real story - as far as you can get real stories from gods, which is almost never - is that she took the wrong side in a god war and got exiled to a lesser dimension. She was depowered enough that she couldn't get out, but when some stupid kids dabbling in black magic went looking for a demon to control, they accidentally opened up her dimension and let her out. Since she wasn't a demon at all, they had no power over her, but they were lucky that she retained so little of her god power that she couldn't make their heads explode."

"But she ain't normal?" Logan wondered if Giles had known the stupid kids who done it, or was maybe a part of them. Was that possible? Just because he seemed proper now didn't mean he'd always been that way.

"Hardly. She's still inhuman. She eventually went into witchcraft, possibly to help her regain some of her god powers, but last I heard she's simply a powerful witch." Giles gave him a curious look. "You don't know how Bob regained his powers, do you?"

"Not really. I mean, I don't know the specifics, but the general gist is Aborigines helped him."

"How?"

Logan shrugged. "He said they knew he was a god the first time they encountered him. But how and what that had to do with him getting' his mojo back I have no idea."

Giles nodded, seemingly accepting this. "I guess we should be glad that Ate's first exposure to humanity was amongst drunken teenage spellcasters. It might have been infinitely worse if she ended up amongst people who actually knew what they were doing."

"So she runs this coven you were talking about?"

"She's the head of it. But as far as I know, she knows a lot of the New York supernatural underground not aligned with the demon mob. If I'm right about her territorial instinct, she'll be pissed off that someone opened up a rift in her city."

He nodded. Logan knew Bob wouldn't be happy about it, but presumably not all fallen gods were the same, and the fact that she still didn't have any of her original powers back and Bob did was proof of that. Now he wasn't about to claim an overwhelming knowledge of gods, but from those he had encountered, he had figured out that most were weird and pretty unpleasant. For every Degei - who was friendly, in spite of being made of snakes and being a death god - there was an Ares, an arrogant prick who had no idea why they were bothering with these bags of meat. Which was in all honesty a good question, just not right now. "Is she likely to kill me?"

"No, you're Bob's avatar. She'll know better than to do that." He paused briefly. "She'll aim to wound."

Wonderful. But honestly, he wasn't surprised.

Before he tracked down another bike in the garage, Doctor Khoury found him and gave him a shot of something that was powerful enough to make him feel a little woozy for a second, but then quickly passed as his system adapted to the drugs. But god, that was a nice minute there.

The traffic was kind of bad - hey, it was New York City; he should have known it was faster to walk - but he eventually found the address, which led to a brownstone in a reasonably decent neighborhood. The steps were clean, swept, and as he went up to the door, he saw that there were no buzzers. This was a single dwelling, a home? Either she made good money, or was a powerful witch. Possibly both. Hopefully not an ex of Trump's.

There was a doorbell, and as he hit it and waited, he got the unmistakable feeling he was being watched. He looked up to where a video camera would be in a normal alcove, and even though he saw nothing, he was pretty sure he heard a faint mechanical buzz. Hidden by magic? Cute. Probably kept vandals from screwing with it. Logan looked square at where he presumed the camera was, and said, "Listen lady, I ain't goin' away just 'cause you won't answer the door."

Maybe it was just coincidence - but probably not - that after a moment he heard the click of a speaker. "Who the hell are you?" She had both a commanding voice and a very slight upper crust British accent.

"A friend of Ripper's. He's callin' in his favor."

"Where is he?"

"Laid up. He got shagged out fighting a chimera in the subway."

He heard a scoff as a burst of static. "There are no chimeras in the subway."

"There was. You can probably go see its corpse if you hurry."

There was a long moment of silence, and then he heard the locks disengage on the door. It opened slightly and stopped, and while he expected someone on the other side, he realized he smelled no one and shoved the door open and walked inside.

It was a wide foyer, with lovingly polished hardwood floors and a wrought iron staircase sweeping off to the left, and he was alone in it, but as soon as he looked around and looked back, she was standing right in front of him. "He couldn't have killed a chimera all by himself." She was about six feet tall, broad shouldered but not fat, just big, a hearty woman you might call "farm stock" if you didn't mind getting your balls kicked up into your stomach. Her hair was shoulder length and reddish brown, framing a face that was round yet angular, imposing and stark, like a face carved from marble. Her eyes were chips of flint, hard and unexpressive, as if whoever created her current form forgot to add eyes and just slapped on a purely cosmetic pair as an afterthought. This was a woman unbothered by a conscience. She was wearing a dark green silk shirt and black Armani pants, along with a scarf of midnight blue silk that was so wide it was virtually a shawl. Who the hell wore a scarf indoors? What the hell was she - Auntie Mame?

"He didn't. I killed it."

"You did not."

"I did. I let it swallow me, and cut my way out of its stomach from the inside."

Her dark eyes narrowed, and she almost seemed to sniff him. "Who has touched you?"

He knew what she meant, but he couldn't resist the joke. "You really wanna list? We're gonna be here a while."

"Don't be a smart ass, mortal. Who's bitch are you?"

"No one's. I'm Bob's avatar."

She made a noise of derision. "You can't be an avatar, Human. And whoever heard of a god named Bob?"

"I'm a mutant, I can be. And I guess he used to be known as Kama, the Hindu god. Of Kama Sutra fame? Or so he claimed. He also claimed to be some Maori storm god, although I don't recall -"

"Oh, him," she interrupted, her voice dripping with venom. "I should have guessed. He's always causing trouble."

"Yeah, he and I have that in common."

"How does he have his powers back? I thought he was stripped."

Logan just shrugged. He wasn't giving her any hints. "I dunno. He's had powers as long as I've known him." Not a lie.

She studied him for a long, hard minute. "So why doesn't Ripper call on him for help?"

"He doesn't owe him."

"I don't owe him anything," she said haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. But she knew she was lying even as she said it. "So who brought a chimera here?"

"We're not sure. We just know that someone's opened up a hell portal in the Canal Street Station."

"Bullshit. No one's opened a Hellmouth here."

Logan shrugged again. "Giles picked it up, and we fought the goddamn chimera. You give me another explanation for it."

She gave him a caustic stare, like she knew he was lying just to annoy and harass her, but after a moment she disappeared. Just like that; there was no transition, just a blink and she was gone. He stood in the foyer, and wondered if he should do a bit of exploring while she was gone. Hell, why not? If she wanted to stop him, she could cast a spell on the house or something.

He wandered into the living room, which was appointed much like a Victorian drawing room, with cherry wood and velvet furniture in abundance, the television the only thing breaking the illusion. He saw little signs that she was into questionable things - mummified raven's feet tied in a bundle on the mantel, beeswax candles that smelled rather strongly of wolf's bane, a small mirrored bowl on the coffee table with an odd combination of small animal bones and foxglove blooms in the center. He hoped that wasn't supposed to be a salad.

Did he smell blood? He traced it to a simple shelf of books, many of which also smelled like old, cured flesh. The blood scent was mainly animal; the skin was not. The books were old enough that the dust made him sneeze.

"What are you doing in here?" she snapped.

He turned, and she was standing in the entryway. "You left me alone. I figured that meant go ahead and wander."

Her scowl could have stripped paint off the walls. "Just because your Kama's little bolt hole doesn't give you the right to treat me like I'm nothing less than your superior, meat."

He wanted to point out she wasn't, that being an ex-god - roughly immortal or not - didn't actually make you special, but she was a witch, and it was possible she could turn him into a toad. So he stuck to the reason why he was here. "You know I'm not lyin' now, right?"

"It's not a Hellmouth," she sniffed. "I'd have known that immediately." She paused briefly. "It is some kind of irregularity, though."

"Ripper wants to hit it with everything we have. You know some powerhouses?"

Her dark eyes burned like stoked coals." I _am_ a powerhouse, bitch. What the hell are you?"

He held up a fist and popped his claws. "Kamikaze pilot. Are we done with the pissing contest now? I can call in Degei if I need to."

She took a step back when his claws sprung, but her expression didn't change. He smelled no fear here, but then again, he was just a meat bag - gods had no fear of them. She just didn't expect things to come out of his hands. "Can you? You should. He might help. Speaking of which, where is Kama?"

"Bob? Australia, I think. Or another dimension. He's all over the place. Kind of hard to keep track of him."

She snorted derisively. "That's him, all right. He likes to spread his troublesome nature all over. When the Powers go rogue, they make a mess of it."

"So what's your story, Ate? Who'd you piss off?"

For that, he got the evilest glare to date, and actually felt his skin start to crawl a little. Was she going to whip out the big ass mojo now? But she just disappeared again, and he called after her, "Oh sure, run from a fight, just 'cause you know Bob wouldn't like it if you killed me." He knew he shouldn't be pissing off a former god, especially if they were very sensitive about it, but he just couldn't help it. If he was a believer type - which he never had been, not to his recollection - he'd have been monstrously disappointed that the gods were so like people in their pettiness and vanities and appetites. They were essentially people, but with more power than should have been allowed. Mutants, but worse.

Left alone, he tried to remember how to summon Degei. Talking to snakes, right? Right. He had to find a snake and talk to it as soon as possible. Didn't one of the kids at school have a snake for a pet? He was pretty sure he scented it in the halls. So great, when he got back, he'd ask Storm who had the snake for a pet and go talk to it.

Wow - if he didn't know he was talking to a god, he'd think he was fucking nuts.

He was reading one of Ate's spell books when the first visitor arrived. A pretty young woman popped up just outside the entryway, dressed in a blue velvet dress and matching fingerless elbow length gloves that could have come from Goths'R'Us, her curly black hair a rat's nest that seemed to rise and fall in a variation of a fauxhawk that he'd never seen before. While she had the thick black eyeliner and the candy apple red slash of a mouth he expected, her skin was not porcelain but coffee tinted with cream. She looked at him with bright hazel eyes. "Oh, are you the avatar?"

"Name's Logan. You?"

"Midnight." She paused, grimacing slightly. "Okay, well, that's my 'casting name. Veronique sounds like a lingerie store."

"It sounds elegantly French."

She smiled and glanced down at the floor as her cheeks darkened slightly, and he guessed he'd made her blush. Well, score one for him. At least one of Ate's protégé's didn't outright loathe him.

"Hey, you flirtin' with my girl?" A guy said, suddenly walking up behind her. He stepped around her and whipped off his sunglasses, tucking them so they hung off the front of his Dropkick Murphys tour t-shirt, and gaped at Logan in wide eyed astonishment. "Holy shit, you're Wolverine, aren't you? That X-Men! Jesus, dude, what'd you do to your hair?"

Logan was both surprised at being recognized, and surprised that any sartorial criticism was coming from this guy. His hair was forest green and just a landing strip on his shaved scalp; it was a flattened Mohawk, one that hadn't been spiked. Three silver earrings dangled from his right ear, and colorful tattoos adorned both of his bared arms. He had a silver stud in his bottom lip and a matching one on his left eyebrow. He was a bit on the short side and looked young, and … didn't smell Human. He smelled quasi-Human. "Never play with Bunsen burners and sterno, kid," he replied dryly. "Or should I say werewolf?"

He did a slight double take. "Wow, did Giles tell you about me?"

Now it was Logan's turn to be nonplussed. "You know Giles?"

"Hell yeah, he was my school librarian. " He wiped his hand on the back of his jeans as he stepped forward, hand extended in greeting. Logan guessed he was metrosexual or bi, because for a straight guy he was wearing a lot of jewelry: he had two bracelets on each wrists, at least two necklaces jingling at his neck, and rings on almost every finger. "My name's Dan Osborne, but everybody in Sunnydale just called me Oz."


	7. Chapter 7

7

Logan felt funny shaking the guy's hand, and he didn't know why. Maybe because he only smelled half human. "So you're one of the Sunnydale kids, huh?"

"Giles mentioned us?"

"Umm, yeah, so's Xander."

"Xander?" Oz cackled a laugh. "He isn't helping out too, is he?"

"No, he's in L.A. working with Angel."

This startled an even bigger laugh out of Oz. "You're shitting me."

"Yeah, that's Angel's opinion as well."

As they waited for the others to show up, Logan learned a bit about them, mainly because he didn't want to talk about himself. Oz was a session musician, mainly a guitar player, but he'd done some "keyboard stuff". Not that it mattered, as Logan had never heard of any of the bands he named. Midnight it turned out was a backing vocalist, which is how they first met - the fact that they were both supernaturally inclined was something they initially had in common. Oz had come with Midnight because he wanted to look after his girlfriend, but also because he hadn't seen Giles in a while and figured if he could help at all he should.

Oz tentatively inquired about how Giles was doing, Angel, and then asked if he had met Willow. He confirmed that he had, and as far as he knew, she was living in Ireland and seemed okay. Logan sensed there was a story there, but he didn't ask. It wasn't his business, and didn't matter anyways.

He asked him if he could wolf out on cue, which made him snicker uncomfortably and admit he hadn't "wolfed out" in a while. He'd embraced Zen Buddhism and was trying very hard to keep from getting upset about anything and from letting his "inner wolf" out. It was why he wasn't sure he could help. There was just something about the way he said it and how uncomfortable he looked about it that made Logan wonder if he was being a hundred percent honest. He was worried about it at the very least.

The other members of the coven started coming in, and they were a decidedly unfriendly bunch. He was glad for Oz and Midnight, otherwise he'd have been buried under an avalanche of iciness. For whatever reason, the rest of the coven hated his fucking guts. What'd he ever do to them? He didn't even know them. And from the way Oz had to introduce him, they didn't even know about his significant YouTube work. Maybe they just didn't like outsiders.

Not counting Oz or the deeply unpleasant Allyson, there were six witches in the coven: Midnight, Indigo, Star, Moonflower, Rain, and Sun. What, was pretentious witches taken? (He kept this comment to himself, though, as he didn't want to be turned into a toad.)

Allyson told him as soon as she was done doing her own reconnaissance she'd join them, clearly dismissing him, as well as giving him no useful information to relay to Giles. Oz offered to head back with him, though, guaranteeing that at least Midnight would keep in touch with him. He decided to take him back with him, because fuck it. Giles might be glad to see him.

Back at the mansion, Pyro had been exaggerating the size of the chimera and what he actually did, and Giles was back on his feet, but the weariness of the day was starting to hit Logan between the eyes. He felt so unbelievably tired he felt like he needed to take a nap before he collapsed. Being digested could do that to a person.

So he pointed Oz towards Giles and went to his room to collapse, and wondered how long he had to rest before the next crisis.

As it turned out, forty five minutes.

For a moment, he thought he heard Jean calling his name, but when he got closer to consciousness he realized that it was Storm. He woke up, rubbing his eyes, and asked, "What's gone wrong now?"

She just glared at him, arms crossed over her chest, looking for all the world like she was going to explode. With her, that was an actual possibility. "I want those women out of the mansion."

"They didn't turn someone into a newt, did they?" He sat up, waiting for his head to clear.

"No, but they probably will."

"They ain't the friendliest bunch, are they?"

"This Temple woman's a fallen god, is she? She's now made me revise my opinion of Bob."

"I know. Makes you wish we just went with him, huh?"

She answered his question in a roundabout way. "That woman is the most arrogant, insufferable …" She refused to commit to the curse, and shook her head instead. "She has no idea how close she came to getting hit by lightning."

"How's Giles taking it all?"

"He's locked himself in Jean's lab."

"Great." As he got up, he rubbed his hand over his head, and felt about a half inch of hair on his scalp. Great. Maybe within a couple of hours, he'd start looking Human again.

He stopped by the kitchen and got a drink out of the fridge before going downstairs, some sort of flavored water thing that he never quite got the point of, but the school still had no beer. What a cheat.

Downstairs, in the "basement", he heard the distant echo of what sounded like chanting. He went to Jean's lab and knocked on the door. Since it was metal, it echoed strangely, but he was used to it. "Giles, it's me."

After a moment, the lock thunked, and the door opened. Giles stared at him in a sort of tired, hollow eyed way, like he'd just been broken under torture. "I'm glad you're up," he said acerbically, "I'm leaving."

"No yer not," he said, walking in. The door closed behind him, but Giles didn't bother to lock it. "Yer not gonna let a bunch of witches beat you."

"It's not the witches, it's Ate. I didn't think she could get more insufferable."

"People surprise you. There's no limit to how much of an asshole a person can be."

"I've noticed. It's even worse when they're not a person." He sat down on a metal stool and sighed heavily. "She's been teaching her coven to act just like her. I feel like I should have an intervention, call the Council and ask for backup."

"Look at it this way: if things go wrong, she could die."

"It's the only thing keeping me going." Giles rubbed his eyes, and got to the point. "She's frozen me out. If we're doing this, we have to follow her rules."

"And what are her rules?"

"She wants to close the rift and take out the dark coven. She has no interest in rescuing Paloma."

He hadn't expected that, but on the other hand, he wasn't that surprised. "Why the fuck not?"

"She feels that if they were interested in her, she had some association with them. So she's not interested in saving her."

"Has someone reminded her we're the good guys?"

"She couldn't be less interested in our opinion."

Again, hardly a shock. "I'll go talk to her. She can't ignore me; I'm Bob's avatar."

"Oh, she can, but she won't kill you."

"Everybody tries. Might as well give her a shot."

There was a brief knock on the door before it slid open, and Oz stuck his head in. "This place is amazing," he said, walking right in. "It's like being in a giant Jiffy-Pop. Where do you hire someone to make you a big basement out of aluminum?"

Logan shrugged. "I dunno. I just woke up here one day."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, after getting KO'd with a tree trunk."

Oz stared at him for a moment, perhaps judging his veracity. "Your life sounds about as fucked up as mine."

"You don't even know the half of it."

"Are they getting ready to move out?" Giles asked Oz, wearily changing the subject.

Oz shrugged. "Looks like it. Very's still arguing with Ally about the girl, though. And us."

Giles propped his head up on his hand, looking at him askance. "What do you mean?"

"She wants to go without us."

That made Giles stand, the stool scraping back across the floor. "That stupid cow." He headed for the door and Oz stepped back out of his way, although the pair exchanged a look before following him out. Giles started muttering to himself, which was always troubling.

Hanging back, as if wanting to avoid any blowback from the upcoming carnage, Oz asked him, "So where's the guy with the Geordie LaForge visor? Or the hot redhead? I thought they were with you guys."

Oh great. He really wanted to talk about this now. "They're dead."

He had the decency to be unsettled by his faux pas. "Oh. Sorry man, I didn't know."

Logan just shrugged. "People die doing this shit all the time. Makes you wonder why anyone bothers saving the world."

"Yeah." He paused momentarily. "And the lack of a dental plan sucks too."

Great, he was a sarcastic bastard. Oh well, why not? It was better than being a humorless asshole.

Speaking of which, Giles had just stormed into the meeting room where Ate's coven was, and they were already arguing by the time Logan and Oz reached the doorway. The coven was standing back, watching with something like awe, as Ate and Giles squared off. Logan could foresee this going on forever, so he grabbed Giles's arm and pulled him back. Before he could recover, Logan stepped right up to Ate and popped his claws as he held his fist beneath her chin. He made sure they didn't puncture, but came close enough that she knew they were there. She glared at him, more in offense than fear, and he saw a brief flicker of fire in her yes. "You wanna do this without us, you'll do it over my dead body."

"That can be arranged," the blonde witch who called herself Moonflower snapped.

But Ate seemed to realize what he was doing, the fire in her eyes dying. "No, I'm not sure it can. We can't kill him."

Moonflower scoffed. "Yes we can."

"No. If we kill him, his master will show up."

"And he'll be pissed off," Logan said, ignoring the "master" dig. "D'ya think you and the girls can take Bob? How well did you get along with him when you were all gods anyways?" That last part was a guess, but if she didn't like Bob, it was a good bet he wasn't enamored of her either.

The way Ate scowled, he'd guessed right. "You think you're clever, don't you? What if I just started killing off everyone else? It wouldn't bring Kama around, now would it?"

Logan retracted his claws, and put his fist against his chest, right over his heart. "It would if I killed myself."

There was some minor murmuring amongst the coven. This had all taken such a bizarre turn no one knew what to make of it. Ate continued to glare at him. "You're bluffing."

He met her glare with one of his own. "Try me, darlin'. I've been dead before, and it's about the only way I get any peace."

They stared at each other for almost a full minute, and it seemed like no one in the room dared to breathe, waiting to see how the power shifted and what happened next. Finally Ate shook her head faintly, losing the stare down. "You're perfect for Kama - you're just as crazy as he is. You're an ideal couple."

"I didn't call myself a kamikaze pilot for nothing," he pointed out.

Giles gave him look that was at once scolding and grateful, and he heard Midnight whisper to Oz, "Is he crazy?"

Oz whispered back, "Nah, he's just scary awesome."

Logan decided to take it as a compliment, even though he wasn't sure it was.

* * *

The basic problem remained the same: they didn't know precisely what they were facing. Ate seemed to think it was a dark coven - black magic practitioners (which Giles said was the most likely thing) - but she had no number to give them, nor did she have any ideas about their major defenses. She wasn't concerned about it either, because she was certain that she could handle anything their opponents could throw at them. Giles wasn't that convinced, and Logan agreed that that sounded too much like famous last words. The problem with the overconfident was they usually didn't die solo but took many people with them.

Ate wanted the coven to go in alone as she didn't see what good mutants would be in this scenario, but what they worked out was simple enough: the coven would go in first, and the mutants would follow. Giles was sure he could offer some magical protection to them, but it was clear to Logan any mutants would be on their own. As such, he figured he should go alone, but that wasn't how it worked. Storm wanted to make sure they got Paloma, as did Kitty, but he managed to convince them to stay back as the second wave, in case they needed to get their asses saved. John refused to stay behind as "back up", so Logan figured he could come along with him. Oz wasn't sure he could help, but felt compelled to come along because Giles and Midnight were involved in this. No, he wasn't a mutant, but he wasn't a witch either; he'd be lost amongst the spellcasters.

There was some question about how they could get all the people out of the subway, but Logan had a simple solution for it: send Pyro into the subway and have him send little bursts of fire towards the fire alarms. Pyro was sure he could hide out while they were evacuating the station, and once it was empty they'd all teleport in. It almost sounded too easy, but it seemed to start off as planned. Pyro triggered the fire alarms pretty quickly, and while there was some panicking, the evacuation went pretty smoothly considering it was a New York subway station.

As soon as they teleported in, Giles threw up a blocking spell to keep people from coming in (unless you could become intangible, then you could), and the coven, led by Ate, headed down into the tunnel. Oz had weapons, namely a compound crossbow and a short sword, both provided somehow by Giles. Logan was a little concerned about the sword, namely because they were never as simple to use as people assumed they were. "You know how to use that?"

Oz nodded. "I took some kendo classes during my quest to tame my inner beast." He paused briefly. "You know how to use 'em?"

"Yeah. Apparently I'm a samurai."

Oz studied him for a moment, eyebrow raised. After several seconds, he admitted, "You know, I can never tell when you're kidding."

"Neither can I."

They gave the coven about a minute to get ahead of them - although really it was just a way of putting distance between themselves and the insufferable Ate - then went on into the tunnel. Although Logan could smell traces of the chimera's blood, there was no sign of its body, and that made him nervous.

Sounds echoed crazily here, the shuffle of footsteps amplifying and caroming around the walls of the tunnel, so Logan wasn't sure if he was hearing what he thought he was hearing. But smells didn't lie, and he was starting to smell a familiar scent. "Guys, we gotta problem," he said quietly.

Oz looked at him sharply. "You smell that too?"

Oz had super smelling? Oh why not, he was a werewolf. Giles turned back, looking over his shoulder. "What is it?"

They didn't have to answer, as now the sound was coming in loud and clear: growling. In front and behind.

"What, they got pit bulls now?" Pyro asked, snapping his Zippo and sending up a little flare of light, piercing the darkness around them.

Still, they couldn't see much. What they could make out was lambent eyes, generally yellow and red, by the dozens and dozens. The yellow eyes belonged to the vampires; the red eyes he wasn't completely sure about, as he didn't recognize their scent. They were surrounded and outnumbered.

"Ah hell," Pyro said, and then the vampires swarmed in.


	8. Chapter 8

8

"Give us a wall of fire, now!" Logan shouted to Pyro, as several things happened at once.

Someone female up ahead of them screamed, "Fuck!" very loudly, and several spells, bursts of bright energy, lit up the tunnel before Pyro could even flick his lighter a second time. Logan grabbed Oz by the arm and yanked him back, putting himself in front of him, but Oz had a stake out already. Before he could ask where he got it, Oz said, "I always carry one into dark places." That was smart.

Pyro was able to create a scrim of flame - not a proper wall - but it was enough to repel the vampires, who had a tendency to go up like gasoline soaked torches near open flame. The red eyed demons weren't impressed, though, and why would they be? They looked like some odd cross between Humans and stick insects, with a generous dollop of rocks and bark thrown in. They had the basic humanoid bodies - two legs, two arms, one head - but they looked wrong in several fundamental ways. The fingers were thin and long, with multiple knuckles that didn't exist on a normal hand; their fingers looked like long, skeletal twigs, while their necks were more like tree trunks, thick and rigid, growing into a head like the top of a shield, a flat skull suddenly ending at a sharp point. You wouldn't want to be head butted by them. They moved like they had extra joints in their hips and legs as well, yet in a jerky, sudden manner, like a skittering spider, with an armored carapace that looked like slate. They were creepy, ugly things, even by demon standards.

"What the hell are those?" Logan shouted to Giles.

Giles was a little busy casting a spell, but after a moment , he said, "They look like Mrkans."

"What the hell are those? What the fuck's their weakness?"

"They're demonic parasites. They're hard to kill."

"Great." Logan actually guessed that last part himself. They didn't seem afraid of the flames either, unlike the vampires. He whispered to Oz, "You get the vamps, I'll get the ticks." The guy just nodded, gripping the stake tightly.

"I can't hold up this big a burst for long," Pyro carped.

"Then drop it and take them on individually, just don't let one grab you. Get your back to the wall so they can't jump you." Logan saw the ticks lurching their way and charged out to meet them, claws popped and slicing the air like scythes. He cut into them, chopping off whatever presented itself, but it was like cutting through thick concrete, and it did little to cut their forward momentum, even when he took off their heads. He started aiming for midsections and legs, hoping to slow them down.

He went into automatic mode, the place in his mind where he did nothing but stand back and watch as his body did what it had been hardwired to do: fight. It was all reflex, all muscle memory; anything that came near him was hit, kicked, slashed, and dismembered. He cut a swath through the ugly things as they chittered and hissed like oversized cockroaches, the vampires deciding to leave him alone for the moment. Which should have been a clue, and by the time the thinking part of his brain kicked back in, he was half doused in brownish-black blood that smelled of leaf mold and bile, his body warm and alive with healing as his system took on Mrkan bites and scratches.

A quick glance around showed that Pyro was fine and being pretty much ignored - Mrkans might not have cared much about flames, but no one liked getting a flamethrower in the face - Giles was in the middle of a scrum but seemed okay, if the thin but visible bubble of energy around him was any indication. But Oz was gone.

Logan tromped through Mrkan body parts, many of which twitched and writhed in muddy pools of blood, as if desperate to crawl back to their masters and rejoin the body, and noticed a rather large pile of vampires down at the farther end of the tunnel. Did they have Oz? Safe bet. He charged towards them, slicing through the armored insectoid demons as he ran past and through them. Some attacked, but most tried to avoid him. Still, one grabbed for his legs as he cut another in half, and Logan hit the ground, splashing in more rank blood. It crawled up him like a beetle, chittering excitedly, but he slashed back blindly, ripping something on it, and then rolled over onto his back, assuming it wouldn't follow. It didn't. It loomed over him like a deformed tree monster, red eyes burning like coals and wound like mouth agape, and he let it dive down on him as he held up his hand. And the stupid thing impaled itself on his claws. At least this confirmed that the Mrkans, no matter how grotesque they appeared to be, were about as smart as your average table lamp.

He used his feet to push up the body, off his claws, and tossed it aside as he rolled back up to his feet and prepared to break up the vampire dog pile, but he paused as a chilling noise suddenly filled the tunnel. It wasn't the insect clicks of the Mrkans, nor the throaty growls of the vampires, but a deep, canine howl.

Uh oh. The wolf was out.

Vampires went flying as the wolf started biting and clawing at everything around it, and while some tried to grab him and hold on to him, it didn't work. He thrashed and bit, and the vampires couldn't really hit an angry werewolf hard enough to stun it. Maybe if it wasn't so mad.

"What the fuck?!" Pyro exclaimed, as the wolf finally showed itself, snarling and howling. It was a Human sized beast, only a wolf in a mutant, slightly demonic sense; its head was too big, for example, as was its muzzle full of razor teeth. Also, it looked like it had a green stripe on the front of its head, sort of like Oz's landing strip Mohawk, but lost in clumps of brown fur.

"Don't hurt him," Giles shouted, probably to the witches as well as John. "It's Oz!"

"He turns into a wolf?" Pyro replied. "Well then why the fuck didn't he do it earlier?!"

Technically, that would have been a good question if he was a mutant and not a werewolf in some kind of self-imposed twelve step recovery program. Logan really didn't feel like trying to explain it to him, and there was no time to anyways. The vampires who hadn't lost a limb to the werewolf fled deeper into the tunnel, and Oz wolf followed like an attack dog on a rampage, which summed it up pretty well actually. Without the vampire back up, the surviving and still intact Mrkans - not many; maybe half a dozen - retreated back into the darkness around them, some clinging to the walls like spiders, only their red eyes glaring down at them giving them away.

Pyro looked around dubiously. "So they call off their attack just like that?"

Giles went over and picked up the short sword that Oz had lost in his transformation sequence. He was scuffing the ground a bit, trying to find the crossbow, but having no luck. "They don't attack opponents that can kill them. They prey on things weaker than them."

"They just attacked us! We aren't weaker than them."

"We were when we were surrounded by vampires." Howls and screams and snarls echoed down from deeper in the tunnel, and even in the dim light, Logan saw the look Giles was giving him, and nodded an acknowledgement. Logan was the only one who was immune to lycanthropy - either his healing factor repelled it, or Bob would remove it; either way, he was good - so he'd be in charge of subduing or dealing with Oz. And that was going to be a huge problem, as they didn't bring along the horse tranquilizers. Did Giles know any sleep spells that worked on werewolves? Maybe Ate and her pretentious witch brigade did. Logan hoped so, because he might have to crack Oz wolf's skull to knock him out if the vampires had no luck.

He led the way farther into the tunnel, with Giles right behind him and Pyro taking up the rear, suspiciously eyeing the remaining Mrkans until they were out of their sight. Logan was glad the noises of a fight remained up ahead, because right now his nose was full of the smell of Mrkan blood, which was still dripping from his clothes. Wow, was he glad he had a superior gag reflex.

But the noises seemed to fade a bit, as he heard a hum. It was almost an electrical hum, but very high pitched - he almost felt it more than heard it. "You guys picking this up?"

"What?" Giles and Pyro asked, but not in unison. That was actually a relief, because if it had been in unison, that would have been freaky.

"It's a hum … it's really loud now." It was; he thought it could feel it making his back teeth vibrate. "You're not hearing this?"

"Ah shit man, now is not the time for a psychotic break," Pyro cracked. "Well, a _more _psychotic break."

Logan looked back and glared at him, letting him know that if he was in punching distance, he'd have smacked his ass back to the subway platform.

"Our hearing isn't as developed as yours, Logan. You'll have to tell us." Giles said, a not so subtle reminder that he could hear better than your average bear. Shit. He kind of forgot, actually, which was kind of stupid, but he never claimed to be a genius. Besides, this noise was so loud it was hard to believe no one else could hear it.

"It's a hum. It's like a sub-sonic drill, only there's no modulation. It's one pitch."

"Okay, I understood two words of that," Pyro said.

"A hum," Giles repeated, ignoring him. It was always a wise decision to ignore Pyro when you could. "It's getting louder?"

"Oh yeah, it's almost painful now, it's -" Logan stopped, and Giles almost ran into his back. "Okay, now it's stopped."

"That was really helpful," Pyro complained. He was always complaining. How had Magneto stood him for so long?

Giles nodded, a strange look on his face. What did he know that he wasn't sharing? He didn't say, he just dipped his head and seemed to indicate that he should continue forward, so Logan did, wondering if he didn't want to say whatever it was he'd figured out in front of Pyro.

Although the stink of Mrkan blood remained cloying and ever-present, the textures of the smells began to change, they were more layered, odd smells he had no name for. People, demons, vampires, werewolf … and what the hell else? There was something else, but he was too stuffed up with Mrkan blood to tell. It was wrong, though.

They rounded a curve of the tunnel, and Logan discovered just how wrong everything was.

They should have entered another tunnel branch, something lined with subway tracks and reeking of urine from the homeless drinkers who managed to slip past authorities and dwell in the shadow of the line, but what they ended up on was the lip of a cliff, looking down at a huge subterranean cavern full of demons currently fighting. It looked like the Oz wolf was down there, shaking something to pieces within its jaws, and probably the vampires, although any familiar ones were lost in the scrum. The witches were down there, huddled in a group, making a protective circle of linked hands and bodies around Ate, who was throwing some major spell and generally yelling at the demons that they were all a bunch of "fucking morons". The rock cliffs around them were a sort of Sedona desert reddish orange, although the cliff they were standing on was clay colored. Logan estimated the drop to be thirty five feet straight down.

Pyro looked down at the turbulent sea of fighting bodies, and exclaimed, "Holy crap, have we entered Zion?"

Once again, they all ignored him. It was for the best, as Logan was pretty sure that reference went right over his head. "We've entered another dimension, haven't we?"

Giles nodded tersely, his jaw growing tense. "The rift's expanding. The noise you heard was the tear in the dimensions."

"Dimensional shit again?" Pyro asked. "Look, are you telling me we're in a different world now?"

"Yes," Giles replied wearily, giving up on keeping any of this from him.

Pyro, still looking down at the bloody demon fight below, nodded. "Does this mean there's another me here?"

"Let's hope not," Giles replied dryly. He then turned back to Logan. "The smart thing to do would be to retrieve Oz and get out of here, but it will also be exceedingly difficult."

"We can't let this rift keep expanding anyways."

"Agreed. But I'm not sure what's causing it, making shutting it down that much harder."

"We just find the doohickey doing this, and break it," Pyro said. "Logan's good at breaking doohickeys."

What, he thought a time machine or something was behind this? Well, fine, let him think that. It was probably a little more palatable than the truth: evil demons and/or sorcerers, perhaps both. "It might be more complicated than that," Giles said diplomatically.

"What's the point of this anyways?" Logan asked, as that point was now really bugging him. "What does Paloma have to do with this?"

"That's a very good question. I was just starting to wonder that myself."

"Up there!" A gruff voice shouted, with all the texture of sandpaper. They looked down to see a stone pillar in the center of the fighting crowd - strike that. The stone pillar was actually a demon who looked to be carved from red rock himself, all spikes and ridges, for whom ugly was far too mild a term. "He's here! Get him!"

It was impossible to say who the demon was pointing at. Him? Giles? He was fairly certain Pyro could be ruled out. Something shot out from the roiling crowd like a guided missile, black and angular, and Logan only got the impression of large dark wings unfurling before he launched himself at it, meeting it as it crowned the edge of the cliff, and they collided with the force of speeding cars. The shock registered through his system and his consciousness wavered, but his automatic responses were still functioning, and he drove his claws into a surface like jagged glass and hung on for dear life. The thing screamed, a high pitched cry not unlike a dental drill, and it soared up towards the ceiling of the cavern, trying to shed him like a unwanted passenger (which is what he was).

Logan felt his nose burning, healing from impact damage (did he break it? Probably, judging by the crackling), and saw that the thing was made up of palm sized black scales that were as sharp as glass, that cut him every time he moved. It had a triangular shaped head that ended in a beak that was as long and sharp as a knitting needle made from obsidian. If it had eyes, he couldn't see them from this angle.

He held on tight with his legs and jabbed one of his claws into what he assumed to be its midsection, making it bleed something as green as antifreeze, and then it started diving down towards the crowd at a speed that was probably equivalent to sixty miles an hour or so. The crowd and the rocky ground they were standing on were coming up fast.

Oh yeah, this was going to hurt.


	9. Chapter 9

9

Logan didn't actually remember impact.

Well, in retrospect there was a rather jarring hit, but after that it was all blissful darkness. It didn't last long enough, though. He woke up in what could have been a few seconds later or as much as a couple of minutes, to feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Opening his eyes, he found a vampire had bitten his wrist and was currently drinking his blood The guy seemed to notice he'd come to and was looking at him with almost comical wariness, as if he knew he was going to pay for this but was hoping for a last second reprieve.

No such luck. Logan popped his claws and sliced his head off, and jumped to his feet before he even dusted. A good thing, as he was swarmed then, the demons rushing in as he made his presence known. A lot of these demons he didn't know by appearance or smell; one looked like a cockroach inflated to Human proportions, while another looked like Golum with a toupee, and yet another looked like a bizarre cross between a hedgehog and a football player. He was cut, bit, hit, and many of them tried to eat him with no attempt to kill him beforehand. There was no room to move; he was hemmed in from all sides, no matter how he slashed through the mess, and it was really beginning to piss him off.

He knew what he had to do, but the decision was pretty much made without him. Going into automatic, letting him do what he was trained to do, was one thing. Letting out whatever remnant of the Weapon X program he had inside him was another. One was reaction without emotion, robotic; the other was pure psychosis. But as tentacles encircled his legs and big stone demon things tried to weigh down his arms, he knew that was the only thing appropriate to the situation. This was a Hell dimension - it was all insanity.

So it was just fighting fire with fire. Demon against monster. Sounded fair to him.

* * *

"I know it sounds cowardly, but maybe we should just take off," Pyro said, as he and Giles watched the fight in the demon pit below. "You know Logan's good at this shit. He'll clear a path, grab Jo-Jo the Dog Boy, and we'll meet him at the door."

He reminded him of Xander, in a fashion. A younger, even more annoying Xander, which he hadn't thought imaginable until this point in time. Giles shook his head and grimaced. "It won't be that easy. Logan's gone."

"What the fuck are you talkin' about? He's right there."

"Yes, but that's not exactly Logan. It's his body, but his mind's checked out."

Pyro stared at him out of the corner of his eye. "What the fucker're you talking about? You sayin' he's nuts? Well, yeah, sure, but that ain't new."

"You don't know him at all, do you?" Logan physically was hard to miss. The demons smelled a Human and went after him, moths to flame, and as he started to disappear beneath the sheer mass of them, limbs started flying, blood misting the air in sprays of odd colors, and there was a noise half way between a scream and a roar. Logan surfaced in the demonic bodies, metal flashing as his arms swung in powerful, deadly arcs. There was no finesse to what he was doing, though; it wasn't the measured attack of a man who was used to hand to hand combat, but the wild, animalistic surges of an angry beast. Even when Logan had been fighting all those demons in the arena and all the survivors were turned on him, he didn't show this level of … Giles didn't want to say brutality, because Logan was always brutal. Savagery, perhaps. Technically a synonym, but not really in this case. He was reacting like a demon; in fact, Oz in his werewolf form, still gnawing all comers, was reacting in a similar manner. They both had the empty eyes of someone whose mind went out for an after dinner stroll and had yet to come back.

The rest of the demons down there seemed to be finally realizing the Human that stumbled into their world wasn't a small midnight snack but a force to be reckoned with. He'd carved himself out an opening, and the demons filling the gap became less frequent as they began to pull back. Given enough time, the demons could probably beat Logan, but they were going to pay dearly in the time he had, and most weren't that dedicated to the fight. Opening a dimensional rift might be easier than dealing with a crazy Human with machete hands and a refusal to be scared or give up. A Human who came here was supposed to be an easy meal. Which begged the question if there were any Humans down here, where were they, and how were they surviving? Yes, Ate and her coven were fine, but they had magic to protect them. They wouldn't be able to hold the same level of magic for days on end, though. So if there were Humans in this, they had to be working with a demon lord, or someone higher up in the food chain. Someone who could control or overpower all these demons. Although a helpful revelation, it wasn't a positive one. What was the American term for it? He wasn't sure, but "deep shit" would have to suffice.

Pyro, reacting to his earlier, rhetorical question, scoffed. "What d'ya mean? I know him pretty well. His brain was used as a fucktowel by the government, and he's an assassin. Magneto always said he was highly overrated and just your average two bit thug, just one with a fearsome reputation. Although, I dunno, looking at him now … I'd be pissing my pants if I was on the other end of those claws."

Logan had had a good sized chunk ripped out of his face, his left cheek was gone and replaced by a raw wound, exposing his adamantium coated jaw. But he didn't seem to notice; he wasn't slowing down as his hands flashed through the air and he decapitated two demons who were standing right next to each other. Tentacles snaked around him from behind and he stabbed himself in the stomach cutting it off, but he didn't seem to notice that either. Now some of the demons were getting scared and running the other way - crazy Human was one thing; crazy Human who didn't care about injuries wasn't something they were used to, and as demons weren't always the best at adapting to change, they weren't sure how to deal with it. Gaps were beginning to show in the bottom of the canyon; between Oz and Logan, the demons were being thinned out in great numbers. "That wasn't what I meant, but it doesn't matter. We have to get down there."

He looked away from the demon slaughter and at Pyro, who was staring at him in open disbelief. "Yeah, well, I didn't bring my mountain climbing gear, so - "

"I'm teleporting us down. Once we get there it is imperative that you don't leave the circle. Is that clear?"

"What circle?"

"Is that clear?"

Pyro rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I got it, don't leave. It's not like I'd want to …"

"Good." Giles activated the spell and teleported them as close as he could manage to the coven. Their circle was too strong for him to penetrate on his own. As soon as they appeared, he looked at Ate, and shouted, "Let us in! I can help!"

She looked at him, but like he'd just farted at the dinner table. The demons who were tired of trying to deal with Logan turned and started charging towards them, but Pyro flicked his lighter and sent flames rushing towards them. "Back off, uglies," he said, although undoubtedly they couldn't hear him. Still, most weren't fond of fire, and backed off.

Ate seemed very reluctant, but as soon as the demon tide had turned towards them at a rate too great for even Pyro to deal with, she cast a spell that teleported them inside the protective circle that her coven had made for her. Pyro turned off the fireworks just before he accidentally cooked one of the witches. "How can you possibly help?" Ate asked him, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes at him.

It was nice to know the years hadn't mellowed her or beat her to a bloody pulp. "We need to find Paloma. She may be the only one who can tell us who rules this dimension."

She glared at him. "Who gives a shit who runs this dimension?"

Giles gestured around them, indicating the landscape. "Someone can control these demons. Do you really think it's Human black magic practitioners alone?"

That got her. She couldn't refute that, not without admitting Humans were actually capable of such power. Never mind that a bunch of drunken Watcher wannabes managed to free her from her dimension; that was just a fluke, in her opinion. She didn't roll her eyes, just glanced to the side with a huff of breath through her nose. "Of course not. I suppose you have a point." She then dipped her head in Logan's direction as he took out something that looked like a squid with rhino legs and disemboweled a Ressik demon while a Sturvik demon attempted to wrestle him down. (The Sturvik was physically stronger, but Logan was slick, covered in as much blood and ichors as he was.) "Can you control that?"

"He's a person, not a thing. He can control himself." Logan slipped out of the Sturvik's tree trunk grasp, landing on his back on the rocky floor, and as the Sturvik reached down to grab him, Logan lunged up and thrust both his claws through its midsection and ripped through it in opposite directions. It had an almost comically surprised look on its face as its upper body fell one way and the lower half fell another way. Logan didn't notice; he'd already hopped to his feet and engaged two Rengle demons and a vampire. "Occasionally. Don't worry about Logan, he's just clearing out a path."

"Clearing a path? Funny; I was thinking it looked a lot like mass murder."

"Ain't murder if it's self-defense, lady," Pyro pointed out.

She turned a nasty look on him. "Don't call me lady, boy."

Pyro shrugged, not actually caring about what she liked to be called. Ironically, he had no idea he was playing with fire. Giles got the subject back on track before she could turn him inside out. "Do you have any idea who might be controlling this dimension?"

"How would I know?" She replied, looking and sounding offended.

The ground beneath them shuddered violently, as if a huge hammer had been brought down on a fault line. This was soon followed by another thud just like it, and another, coming in regular rhythm. The witches looked at Ate in concern, although didn't break the circle; Pyro looked at him, curious and annoyed, as if this was somehow his doing. The demons, for their part, were unconcerned, which made Giles suddenly suspicious. Oz had the sense to pause his dismembering and look around, sniffing the air, but Logan continued disemboweling all comers, in this mode only willing to deal with problems as they were presented to him. Considering where they were, that was probably a good idea.

"What the fuck's that noise?" Pyro finally asked. "Somebody firing mortars?"

Oz looked towards the entrance of the canyon and snarled, crouching low as fur raised along his back. That wasn't a good sign.

Rocks started crumbling on the left hand side, the canyon walls cracking and falling away like burnt skin, some of the rocky detritus collapsing on demons who weren't quick or smart enough to get out of the way. They weren't in danger of getting crushed, but small bits of flying rubble bounced off the magical forcefield that the coven erected.

Finally, a foot came crashing through the canyon opening. It was a huge foot, about the size of your average car, and following the line up, it seemed to be attached to a leg, and the leg to a body. All in all, they were looking at a giant demon, well over ten meters tall. He had skin like concrete, grey and hard, and a roughly humanoid body, although its head was somewhat pointy; it was the ears mainly, which looked as big as parasails. Safe to say, it wasn't about to win an underworld beauty contest. It opened its large, fish like mouth, baring lots of small pointed teeth, and boomed, "I'm trying to sleep! Would you keep it down?"

The giant looked down at the snarling Oz and the blood soaked Logan, who was too busy fighting off six Yrisian demons to notice the giant yet. "Who are you with?" The giant asked, but neither Oz nor Logan realized they were being addressed.

Ate gasped slightly. "Is that who I think it is?"

Giles nodded glumly. "I think so."

"Who is it?" Pyro asked.

But before he could answer, the giant turned his head and looked down at the coven. His eyes were all black pupils; they looked like huge gaping holes in his misshapen skull. "Giles, is that you?"

He sighed wearily. He was hoping he wouldn't recognize him after all this time. "Hello, Arba."

He wasn't looking forward to this.


	10. Chapter 10

10

"You know Abra?" Ate asked him in obvious disbelief. She was glaring at him in a manner best described as hateful.

"Know is too strong a term," Giles admitted. "He just didn't kill me once when he could have."

"So you owe him."

"No … let's just say we didn't kill each other when we could have, and leave it at that."

Somehow he didn't think she would, as much as he wanted her to. Abra was now squinting down at Oz, who was hunched up and snarling at him, fur raised like he'd just been shocked by static electricity. "Now look here, pooch, I didn't invite you. Don't go getting uppity with me."

"He's with me," Giles shouted at him. "Don't hurt him!"

Abra looked at him askance, the black holes of his eyes narrowing in obvious disbelief. "You travel with werewolves now?" A new growling noise caught Abra's attention, but this time it wasn't Oz, but Logan, who had currently run out of demons to fight and had just noticed Abra. "You can't even be thinking about it, little man. I'll crush you like a grape." But Logan was still growling at him, claws held out and dripping a toxic mix of blood. His size apparently didn't matter; he smelled wrong, therefore was a decent target. Giles wondered what you had to do to a man to make him that unconcerned about his own well being. Then again, it was always difficult, through normal means, to make a man do something he was predisposed not to do. Perhaps Weapon X simply found a way to exploit and enhance Logan's own natural self-destructive tendencies and use them to their advantage. It also made him wonder if he was ever going to tell him that the Watchers knew about the Organization and some even knew a bit about Weapon X, but no one was overly concerned since demons were in no way involved, at least not to their knowledge. It set such an ugly, but predictable, precedent: people could do whatever ugly thing they wanted to other people, as long as they were all Human. Far be it from them to, oh, _help_ _fellow Humans being tortured by their fellow man_. Thinking about things like this, he wondered why he rejoined. But at least Watchers weren't alone in this type of callous behavior.

Abra wasn't scared by Logan's refusal to be scared of him, but he was puzzled. "What the fuck is this thing anyways? You make yourself a robot, Rupert?"

"He's Human, and he's with me too. Don't hurt him. If you can at all avoid it."

Logan was growling through the entire conversation, glaring at him with those astonishingly empty - yet angry - eyes. Abra continued squinting down at him like he was an absolutely fascinating shell he found on the beach. "He's actually thinking of attacking me, isn't he? Is he brain damaged?"

"No, he's just not in his right mind at the moment." Noticing the sneaky smirk on Abra's face, he quickly added, "Don't tease him. Yes, you're bigger and stronger than he is, but he could actually hurt you."

That earned a scoff, which sounded like rocks sliding down a mountainside. "This little flea?"

"He was made to kill. If you have a weakness, he will do his damnedest to find it before you kill him."

"And he's an avatar," Ate added. Giles quickly shot her a scolding look. So much for that ace in the hole.

"This thing? Who the fuck's he an avatar for?"

Stuck, he had no choice. He could lie, but Abra was very good at ferreting out lies. "Bob."

For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of Logan and Oz both growling, along with some groans from wounded demons who wanted to get up, but didn't want to get bit or stabbed again. Abra's ears drooped slightly. "Bob. Sunavbitch, will the Powers never leave me alone?"

"They have nothing to do with this." Well, as far as Giles knew.

Abra scowled down at him. "Right. Bob's avatar just happens to be here."

"Actually, yes. Since when does Bob work directly for the Powers? You know he's as rogue as you are."

The nephilim grunted in disgust. "He's still one of them. You can't trust them."

The nephilim were one of the few breeds of demon mentioned in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, although they got what they were wrong (but that wasn't a shock - much of what was in both of them were wrong, to the point that many Watchers wondered if they weren't demon plants of some sort). Supposedly the nephilim were the offspring of angels and Humans, but since what were thought of as angels were really just another kind of demon, the offspring shouldn't be as grotesque as they were. No, the truth of the nephilim was more surprising: they were the offspring of divine beings and demons. Now supposedly one type of divine being was responsible for the entire nephilim race (which was admittedly small), but no one was actually sure who, because they wouldn't cop to it. Rumor - and Abra - had it that the Powers were responsible, whilst others thought that one of the more legendarily randy gods (Zeus, Odin, Aphrodite) was responsible. The truth is, no one knew and would probably never know, as no god would ever admit to creating such a bastard race that seemed to exist only to trouble and harass divine beings. The nephilim as a whole - all ten of them - had chips on their shoulder the size of your average boulder. They got none of the divine powers, but they seemed to get all of the inhumanity. They were incredibly dangerous.

"We need to talk. Can you call your people off?"

"My people?"

"The demons aren't working for you?"

He looked around skeptically at the piles of bodies, some of which he had accidentally squished himself. "They'd have to be alive to work, don't you think?"

"Don't be sarcastic."

"These guys are leasers; they're just using the space."

"I've been drugged, haven't I?" Pyro asked, rubbing his eyes. "Is a giant pinhead actually talking to us?"

Giles ignored him, because Abra had just said something important. "Leasers? You're renting out your realm?"

The giant shrugged uncomfortably. "Not rent, exactly. These guys just needed a dimension close to the Earth one, and they'll owe me big time. If this whole thing pays off, they said I can be the first to take advantage of it."

Vague, but definitely menacing. He really didn't like the sound of this. "What do you mean?"

"We can talk, but call off your dogs before I squish them," Abra said, pointing down at Oz and Logan.

Giles glanced back at Ate. "Can you put Oz to sleep? And I mean actual sleep, not kill."

At the addition of "not kill", she scowled sourly. "Of course I can. But why not kill him? He's a damned creature anyways. It's a mercy killing."

"He's a Human being, in spite of what he appears to be. And once he sleeps, he'll revert back to that form."

"What about your crazy friend there?"

Giles simply cast a minor "clarity" spell on Logan, figuring that all he needed was a sudden, clear awareness of where he was to shock him back to full consciousness. It must have worked, because after a moment, he stopped growling and shook his head, his hand instinctively reaching for the grotesque wound on the side of his face, which was starting to heal but had a long way to go. "What the fuck ..?" he grumbled. His fingers traced the outline of the hole, and then, looking around, he noticed the grotesque giant in front of him. He took a step back, brow furrowing in confusion, but he didn't retract his claws, and aware of Abra's scrutiny, he narrowed his eyes in response, and asked, "You wanna rumble, Godzilla?"

Abra laughed, a booming noise like a cannon that made them all cringe a little. "You still wanna fight me, midget? You don't got the sense of a drunken stoat, do ya?"

"Giles?" Logan asked. And while it didn't sound like it, Logan was asking him if he should go ahead and attack the giant. If only most Slayers were so conscientious. He both admired and feared Logan's causal disregard for his own well-being.

"It's okay, Logan. I know him. In a manner of speaking."

Ate had her coven cast the spell on Oz, and the werewolf toppled over on its side, so deeply asleep that each heaving breath sounded a bit like a snore. None of the demons capable of movement were attacking, probably because Abra was on the scene, and if he couldn't handle it, the problem just couldn't be handled. Since a détente seemed to have been reached, Giles asked, with renewed forcefulness in his voice, "Abra, what is going on?"

Since Logan had started drifting back towards the coven, Abra had turned his hard, dark gaze their way. Giles almost wished he returned to looking at them sidelong again. "Are you so out of touch you're unaware of the chaos, Rupert?"

"What chaos?"

"The underworld's been in turmoil for some time. It seems someone let all the Slayers out at once - were you even aware that was a possibility? - and the balance has been thrown outta whack. It's gotten messy, to the point where someone decided to just sort it all out."

Giles felt a deep twinge in his gut that he hadn't felt for years. In a strange way, it was comforting to know he was still capable of feeling stark terror. "Sort it all out? Who decided to do this, and how?"

Abra got this unsettlingly smug smirk on his face. "Who do you think? You think that a buncha Humans actually did this? Really? This took an awful lot of power. You guys just don't have that much. This was an upstairs decision."

Giles felt his stomach go into freefall as Logan shook his head and made a noise of disgust. "I've had enough of fucking gods."

The nephilim grinned savagely, showing teeth large enough to impale them all. "Know what else, Rupert? We were waiting for you. To reverse the whole damn mess, we needed a Slayer, and someone who was near ground zero of the whole thing. Nice of you to volunteer."

"What the hell does any of this mean?" Pyro asked, exasperated. "I think I understood every third word, and it still didn't make sense."

"It means this is a trap, kid," Logan growled, glaring at Abra, fists clenched hard at his side. He looked like he was ready to attack, in spite of the size difference, but then it seemed like many more demons showed up, both on the ground and on the cliff where they had once been standing. Maybe fifty or so altogether, of various types, so he couldn't guess what god might have been involved in this.

"You led us into a trap?" Ate roared, giving him an angry shove from behind. He stumbled, but managed to stop himself before he crashed into one of the coven. "You idiot! I'm gonna kill you!"

Giles looked around, and admitted, "I'm afraid you're going to have to get in line."

Oh well. At least they'd find out who the mastermind behind all of this was. It was the only benefit in being taken prisoner.


	11. Chapter 11

11

"Why aren't we fighting them?" Pyro asked. "We could. Logan, just do that animal thing again."

He gave him a sidelong glare. "Animal thing?" He then scowled and mentally dismissed his thought train. "I don't think fightin's gonna help much at the moment."

Pyro scoffed in disbelief. "Excuse me? What pod person are you exactly? We can kick their asses - "

"Follow my lead, kid," he snapped, hoping John would just shut the hell up.

Big giant ugly - Abra - chuckled, sounding like an avalanche down a mountainside. "You think you can fight a god, little Human? How dumb are you?"

"You're no more a god than I am," John spat, apparently thinking Abra was referring to himself.

The expression on the giant's face changed, and Logan realized that had offended him for some reason. He looked at Giles, whose glance was concerned. Had John really screwed the pooch here?

He hardly had time to wonder. Reality seemed to blink, and Logan found himself in a dark place, standing in cold, ankle deep - and judging by the smell - stagnant water. "Motherfucker," he growled to no one, his curse echoing through the dark space. He'd been separated from the others. Because he was Bob's avatar? Good bet. They couldn't risk killing him and bringing Bob to the party, so they just sent him elsewhere.

His eyes adjusted, but he didn't know why they bothered, as he was in a place that was empty as it was dark. There were walls and a ceiling - stone by the feel of them - but it could have been nothing more than a part of a sewer system. If he'd smelled Humans he'd think he was back on Earth, but he wasn't picking up anything human besides himself.

He decided to explore the space, see if there was an exit, but after about ten minutes he realized that he just might be inside something enclosed, something that looped around on itself like an ouroboros. But he heard a noise, tiny and wet, and continued on cautiously, finally picking up a scent of something ... demonic. Unrecognizable, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Although he saw nothing, no movement in the dark, he sprung his claws.

"Holy shit!" a voice yelped, and Logan caught a quiver of movement on the far right hand side ahead of him. Was it flat against the wall? "I ain't gonna do anything to ya, man! I'm harmless!"

Was it ..? As he neared the area where he saw the movement, he realized that it was indeed flat against the wall - it was clinging to the wall.

This demon was unlike any he'd seen before, although it could have been a relative of Thrak's. It was a spongy wet mass spread over a patch of wall about two feet in length and a foot and a half wide. He could only tell where the top of it was because it had two eye stalks that swiveled to face him as he sloshed near, thin antennae that ended in eyeballs the size of small apples, and very nearly the same color pale green. "What the hell are you?"

The eyes blinked at him in a manner that could have signified offense. "What kind of question is that? I'm a clergon."

"Klingon?"

"CLER-gon! Jeeze, why do all you humans say that?"

Logan still couldn't tell where it was speaking from. "You've met other humans?"

"Yeah, this is the place Abra flushes the ones he has no interest in. I can see why he flushed you ... you gonna put those away? I don't have a spine or a skeleton, you know. You could probably punch a hole through me; you don't need knives."

Although it looked like it was telling the truth, you couldn't take such things for granted with a demon. "You related to ughs at all?"

"Ugh demons? Yeah, we're distant cousins." Logan retracted his claws. The worst thing Thrak could do - besides sing and make everyone's brain explode out their ears - was stain his clothes. "Thank you. So you've met ughs?"

"I know one, kinda. named Thrak."

"Thrakazog? Oh man, he gets around, don't he?" There was a gurgling noise that could have been a chuckle. "So he's on Earth now, huh?"

"He really is a he?"

The clergon paused and blinked at him for a moment. "Technically, we're all hermaphrodites. We're both he and she."

"Ah. yeah, I know a kid like that." Somehow he didn't think Sunshine would take any comfort in knowing that some demons could be both sexes at once too. "So why are you down here if this is Abra's toilet?"

There was a strange chittering noise that Logan realized was laughter as soon as the clergon said, "Ha, toilet. Well, I'm in the crapper - so to speak - 'cause I pissed him off. Apparently I talk too much. Do I talk too much? No fucking way. The problem is, he's a grumpy bastard. He's still sore about being abandoned by the gods, or whatever the fuck he thinks."

Oh great. He could just tell this flattened slug was a chatterbox. Just his luck. "If he hates the gods, why is he working with one?"

There was a squelching noise as the clergon shifted position on the wall. It was like watching a flattened wet pelt realign itself. "Ah, see, he's a vain bugger too. He was buttered up until he could squeeze through a Bruggan's blowhole, you know what I mean?"

"No." He didn't have the slightest idea what the fuck he was talking about. "Who's the god?"

"Ralph."

"Ralph?" Logan repeated in disbelief. Well, if Bob could be Bob, he supposed a god could call itself whatever it wanted. But Ralph?

"Well, he says it's pronounced "rafe", but fuck me, it's Ralph."

"So what does Ralph do? What does he look like?"

The rubbery brown skin of the clergon rippled like a flag in the wind, and Logan decided to interpret that as a shrug. "A guy. Bipedal. Sometimes he's a woman. He likes to shift persona. As far as powers go ... I dunno. He's a god. They do god stuff. Shouldn't you know? You gotta whiff of god about you."

"I'm an avatar, but I'm not possessed right now."

"An avatar? Fuck you! Since when can a human be an avatar?"

"I have a healing factor. And fuck you, I am. You said I had a whiff of god about me yourself."

He made a noise that could have been a chuckle, but sounded like water burping in a clogged drain. "So who's the god?"

"Bob."

The clergon suddenly fell from the wall and splashed into the water, disappearing entirely beneath its dark, still surface. Then after a moment, the two eyestalks popped out of the water and blinked up at him nervously. "Bob? You haven't told him I'm here, have you?"

Wow - Bob got around, didn't he? "I'm not talking to him right now, and I have no idea who the fuck you are." Hey, wait a minute - how was he talking underwater? This was fucking weird.

"Okay, good." It paused, the water slowing down its sloshing. "I'm Whoomp, by the way."

"No yer not," he snapped. "Whoomp is not a name. It's the worst alias I've ever heard in my life." He grimaced as he realized he really didn't give a shit. "Fuck it, call yourself Banana Boat, see if I care. Is there a way out of here?"

"I'm not sure."

"That's generally a yes or no question."

"I don't like to look around too much. I'm afraid of what I might find."

That was actually sensible. He couldn't find too much fault with that. Logan sloshed on ahead, doing his best to avoid stepping on whatever Whoomp was. (He was not calling him Whoomp. For no reason at all, he mentally dubbed him "Frank".) But the sounds in the water and the sense of disturbance clued him in that Frank was following him. "Go back to hangin' on the wall if you can't be helpful."

"I'd like to get out of here," the demon said. "It's dark and it smells funny, and there's no one to talk to. Also, there isn't a single Belgian waffle to be found. Believe me, I've looked."

Belgian waffles? If someone told him that none of this actually happened, that the last few years of his life was an imposed delusion by a psychotic telepath who wanted to drive him crazy, he'd believe it. They'd have to be the most fucked up person in the world, and probably constantly on mescaline, but he wouldn't put anything past the Organization. He mentally waved a white flag - he gave up; he'd give them absolutely anything they wanted - but no one bit. Damn it, maybe this was all real.

Maybe he was on mescaline. Hey, yeah - he probably had no tolerance for peyote yet. Maybe, while his immune system was adjusting, he was hallucinating all this shit. Oh man, he so wished that was true. Why couldn't it be true?

"Unless you can find an exit, get the fuck away from me."

For a long moment, there was no sound but the sloshing of the water, and then Frank said, almost hesitantly, "I think there's a tunnel up."

"A tunnel up? Where?"

"Well, if you follow this place long enough, you'll find it."

This guy was as helpful as a teaspoon in a flood. What did he think he was doing?! Listening to a demon who could have been a manta ray's uglier cousin. Somewhere above him there was big ugly talking to his god - who was probably going to double cross him; did that never occur to these idiots? - with Giles, John, and all the others. He had to get back to them, even if he started cutting through whatever these tunnels were made of.

It was in the second - third? Maybe fourth - length of similar looking tunnels that he smelled something familiar. It was vaguely canine, and vaguely Human. "Oz?" he asked. He was used to the darkness, but he still followed the scent to a shape slumped against the far wall. Oz was back in Human form, and his torso was so pale it almost glowed. He also wore a gold ring in one nipple, and had a tattoo of a bleeding heart on his chest. He was really one of those guys that benefited from a shirt. "Oz. Hey, wake up." He was forced to crouch down and shake him, and was contemplating moving on to slapping when he finally started to regain consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly, and looked around as if half asleep. Finally, when he looked back at Logan, he asked, "So, is there a reason I'm naked and sitting in someone's flooded basement? Or did I fall asleep during a performance art piece?"

"I wish. You wolfed out and attacked a bunch of demons. The head honcho's working with some deranged god, and because we hurt a lot of the shook troops, we were exiled to the sub-basement."

For a long moment, he just stared at him. Then he moved his shoulders slightly, a faint shrug, and admitted, "It happens." He started to stand up, but then sat back down. "Say, you don't see my clothes floating around, do you?"

"No." And it wasn't like there was a lot of stuff they could use in lieu of it. Logan had no choice but to take off what was left of his shirt, torn and bloody as it was, and handed it to him. "All I got."

"Thanks," he said, taking it. "I'm cool with nudity - I mean, I'm a werewolf, I better be by now - but I don't like the idea of the big bads being able to see easy to rip off parts."

"Understood." That had occasionally occurred to Logan, but only as an afterthought; if he was in fight mode, he could be wearing a tutu. He really didn't notice these things until after the fact.

Oz looked at his t-shirt for a moment, and Logan thought he was going to comment on its ragged state, but instead he said, "You've got quite the chest, don't you? Is that what they mean by barrel chest? 'Cause when I was kid, I always imagined one of those guys wearing a barrel."

Logan looked down at himself, and tried to think of a response. Sometimes Oz just said things that he wasn't sure he should even acknowledge. "I'm not sure I'm barrel chested, I'm just kinda broad."

Oz stood up (shakily, although he seemed to try and pretend he wasn't) and tied the remains of Logan's shirt around his waist. He was skinny enough that it actually fit pretty well, although it looked like he was wearing the world's weirdest skirt.

There was sloshing as Frank repositioned himself, and then his eyestalks bobbed into view beside him. "Hi, I'm Whoomp."

Oz didn't seem at all surprised by the eyestalks blinking at him. Then again, being a werewolf, you probably got used to the odd really fast. "Oh. You just eyes or what?"

"He has a body, it's just … flat," Logan said, and quickly added, "There's no fucking way his name is Whoomp. Just call him Frank."

Oz shrugged. "Whatever. What's the deal down here?"

"Again, it's a sub-basement. I'm tryin' to find a way out."

"Sounds good. Let's go."

Logan continued on, with Frank and Oz trailing behind him. Again, this could be a hallucination, and it would explain everything.

About seven tunnels down Logan did start to notice a gradient slope, but along with that came a scent that was strange; kind of damp and moldy, like sweat socks left behind a radiator. "Oh man, is that demon farts?" Oz gasped, reacting to it too. Logan wasn't sure if it was comforting that someone else had super-smelling, or if it was weird that his senses no longer gave him a personal edge.

"It's the Vrillyan," Frank said. "They taste like rust."

Logan and Oz stopped and looked down at the eyestalks. "What's a Vrillyan?" Logan asked first.

"Just a pest. You know, like an earth insect."

For some reason, even though Frank said it very casually, it set off alarm bells in his head. "What kinda insect?"

That's when they heard the noise.

It was like steam venting from a burst radiator, an intense hiss, and Logan and Oz looked ahead of them to see a shape resolve in the darkness, something about the size and shape of a Volkswagen Bug, but with five legs on either side of its bulbous body. It had a sleek black and blue mottled carapace, and black embers for eyes over a wide pair of mandibles that opened and closed with castanet clicks. There were actually two sets of mandibles, one set over the other, and they opened wide enough that they could have theoretically bit off their heads.

"I'm gonna guess spider," Oz said.

Oh fuck.

* * *

"Hey!" John shouted, as soon as Logan and the coven disappeared. "Where the fuck did they go?!"

Giles could have told him, but felt too irritated to respond. He was hoping that Abra would get rid of John too, but oh no, he had to leave him and Ate.

This was hell.

More of Abra's remaining demon soldiers came over, and essentially rounded them up, surrounding them on all sides. John exchanged angry looks with some of them and flicked open his lighter, but Giles grabbed his arm and hissed, "Save it for later."

John's look was skeptical. "Why? What are we waiting for?"

"You'll know it when you see it," Giles whispered harshly. Had this boy no patience at all?

"Where's my coven?" Ate demanded, not intimidated by either Abra or the demons surrounding her. And why would she be? She used to be a god, and still carried herself like she was.

"A safer place than here," Abra replied cryptically, and then motioned for them to lead the way through the rock arch that led deeper into the canyon. Reluctantly, Giles did so, but on the inside he wasn't reluctant at all; this was pretty much going according to plan. It was just awful when a plan demanded so much of you.

Giles expected more canyon, but stepping through the arch he suddenly moved from canyon to what seemed like a wide, tiled lobby, with an indecipherable black pattern on a white background, and several hard plastic waiting room chairs lined up against the far white walls. There was no way Abra could have fit in this place, he'd have taken the ceiling right out, but he was transformed into a tall - but still realistic - Human man in a neat blue suit. He had thick black hair and a trim figure, he was almost chic, except his skin was still grey, and his eyes were just empty sockets. It was close, but clearly he had to go back to the drawing table. "Have a seat," Abra said. "He should be by shortly."

"Who's he?" Ate demanded, remaining standing.

Giles sat down because he was tired, and John followed suit, looking around intently. "I don't remember walking through a door."

"You didn't."

He looked confused. "Am I supposed to get any of this?"

"No."

"You'll find out," Abra said to Ate, gesturing to a chair. She made a gesture back at him, a single finger raised, but he didn't know what it meant and just seemed peeved that she wouldn't sit down.

Finally someone appeared in the center of the room, a vaguely Humanoid shaped red flame. It wasn't a man on fire or a flaming aura, just someone made out of flames. Gods could show up in any form they wanted, more often than not, and flames were quite popular for the "awe" effect, so Giles wasn't surprised. Abra stood off to the side, looking like he wanted to genuflect but wasn't sure how.

There was no face, so Giles only knew he was talking to him because he pointed a flaming hand in his direction. "You! You have br -"

"This is bullshit!" Ate suddenly snapped. "Ralph, is that you?!"

Ralph?


	12. Chapter 12

12

The god made of flame - Giles refused to believe he was actually named Ralph - seemed to do a double take upon seeing Ate, and his flames seemed to flicker and shrink a bit. "What the hell are you doing here? Weren't you banished?"

Ate had her arms crossed over her chest, looking as haughty as a waitress in the most overpriced restaurant in London. "And aren't you slumming, Raijin?"

"Raijin?" Giles repeated, surprised. He'd heard that name before, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it.

John looked at him curiously. "You know this dickhead?"

"I know of him. I thought he was a good guy." Well, if any of Raijin's history could be believed, he was a negative god turned positive, but with the gods, that was not only a mixed bag but a subjective call. Truth be told, most gods were neither good or bad, just working for their own ends. Like people, but with the power to destroy entire dimensions.

The boy snorted a laugh. "Well, that's kind of subjective, isn't it?"

He had no response to that, mainly because he'd been thinking the same thing.

"Don't pretend you have any idea what's been going on since you've been stuck on the Human plane," Raijin snapped. "It's been a fucking mess. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I was showing my coven how you put overreaching demons in their place, but I see now it's actually just putting some stupid assface in his place."

"Don't push me, woman. If you are indeed a woman now."

"You wouldn't know a gender if it was written on your hand."

"Are they exes or something?" John asked, smirking at this catty and slightly nonsensical banter.

"I have no idea," Giles admitted. But he had a sense that things were about to take a turn for the worse.

* * *

How hard was it to kill a spider? Really, it was a piece of cake, even if they were the size of a compact car.

Or so Logan thought. He didn't count on it having an exoskeleton of a substance nearly as hard as adamantium.

His first stab was slower going than he thought, the shock of initial impact shuddering up his arm, and the damn thing bit him, mandibles slicing into his thigh like hedge clippers, cutting straight to bone. He yelped in pain as he forced his claws through the carapace, which cracked like thick ice, and it made a squealing noise that was half-animalistic, half-robotic.

Logan suddenly felt numb. It started in his leg, and then seemed to quickly diffuse throughout his entire body. He tried to move himself and found he couldn't; the spider pulled away, and Logan couldn't retract his claws or pull them out of its body, so he was pulled with it. "Fuck," Logan cursed, and that was the last thing he said before his throat seized up.

His lungs stopped before his heart, and there was a moment when his heart raced in panic, but then his heart stopped too. He saw himself falling towards the dark water before his consciousness fled.

His last thought was _Goddamn poisonous venom …_

* * *

Personally, Oz loved how things, no matter how bad and dire, could always get worse. The universe was showing its sense of humor, and it was bitter and kind of nasty.

"Oh no!" Whoomp exclaimed, sounding genuinely heartbroken. "I think he's dead!"

Logan collapsed into the water much like a mannequin would, stiff as hell and making no attempt to protect himself, but he probably couldn't. "Are these things poisonous?" Oz asked, although he'd already guessed. Logan didn't fall that way on purpose.

"Not to me," the demon replied, eye stalks drooping down close to the water.

Oz nodded. So, this demon wasn't the brightest in the world. Terrific. No wonder it had never escaped from the basement.

He crouched down and grabbed Logan, reaching in the murky water and just pulling on the first body part he found (he hoped it was his leg), but he almost couldn't pick him up, not even one limb. Wow, he was heavier than he thought. Then again, he was full of metal, so that tracked. So he felt around until he found his head and turned him over on his back, pulling his upper body up by the arms, so at least he wouldn't drown. "You are one heavy mother trucker," he told him. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Was he in fact dead? Or just paralyzed? He couldn't actually tell at the moment. He considered asking him to blink if he was still conscious or alive, but instantly realized if he was paralyzed, he couldn't even blink. So that plan was screwed.

The spider was making an odd noise, like a hissing radiator pipe, and he saw dark liquid was rolling off its back and plopping in the water. Logan hurt it, no doubt about that, but he paid the price for that. The spider looked like it was considering finishing Logan off, or maybe coming after him. He couldn't say, mainly because he had no idea how demonic giant spiders thought. Perhaps it was asking if they could redecorate its web. Assuming it had a web.

"You don't have a big ass can of Raid, do you?" he asked Whoomp. (Frank.)

The eye stalks swiveled towards him after a moment, as if only suddenly aware he was talking to him. "Raid? What's that?"

"Insect repellant."

"No."

Oz had no choice but to prop Logan against the wall, as it had been a while since he'd lifted anything heavier than a guitar. He knew he should go to a gym, but those seemed so pretentious and obnoxious to him, traitorous somehow. Besides, he was a werewolf, and somehow the notion that he needed to exercise was insulting. Should supernatural beings need to exercise? On the plus side, Zan had pointed out he lived on the edge of Chelsea, one of New York's gayest spots, meaning all the fancy gyms around him - with their state of the art equipment and huge juice bars - were also gay meet up areas, the "new bars", and Oz couldn't help but want to visit some and see if any of the guys would flirt with him and try to pick him up. He wasn't into that, but come on - anyone hitting on you was an ego boost, even if you didn't go for their gender. Besides, most of his friends up here were gay, which he almost thought of as karma. After Willow, he wondered if he'd somehow made her gay, even though he knew it didn't work like that, but there was something about your girlfriend leaving you for a girl that just made you want to become a monk. You couldn't help but wonder if it was you, if you did something so horribly wrong that she just said to herself 'No more men for me', even if you knew the idea was beyond stupid. At least having loads of gay friends, he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had nothing to do with him.

The spider, as mortally wounded as it was, was still advancing. Not quickly - maybe he smelled like wet dog to it, or maybe it was afraid he had claws too - but enough that it was starting to bother him. He couldn't change into a wolf on cue even if he wanted to, and he kind of did right now. He'd have to get really upset again… and frankly he couldn't. He was still exhausted from last time. Getting morphing pissed off was really draining. "Well, you gotta big shoe then? Rolled up newspaper? Grenade?"

"Why would I have shoes?" Whoomp replied, proving that he was one of those humorless demons. Oz honestly didn't know what was worse: humorless demons were such pains in the asses, but then ones with a sense of humor proved that the humorless ones might actually be better to have around. Nailing someone's puppy to a wall wasn't actually "funny ha ha", but try telling Angelus that.

Logan suddenly gasped violently and sat forward, choking for breath. It startled everyone, including the spider, which stopped and chittered at them. "Hey, you're alive," Oz noted. He didn't mean to sound stupid, but he kind of did.

After coughing for a moment, Logan said, "Aww fuck. I hate poison."

"You okay?" Again, a stupid question. He was just Senor Stupido today.

"I'm pissed off," he said, spitting blood (?) out of his mouth before standing up and tromping back towards the spider. "Come here, you motherfucker."

Now the spider was scared, but too late. It didn't back up particularly well, so it couldn't escape, and while it bit Logan again - that's what it had in its arsenal - Logan seemed to ignore it as he drove his claws hard into its carapace. The spider made a strangely metallic squeal as Logan not only drove his claws in, cracking its carapace, but he stomped on its back with his foot, smashing it down into the water. "Goddamn motherfucking bug," he cursed, as he killed it with efficient brutality. "Fill me with venom, you stupid shit …"

Whoomp's eye stalks hovered briefly near the surface of the water, and looked for a disconcerting moment like they were loose eyeballs just floating. "Are you sure he's not a demon?"

Oz shrugged. "He's a superhero. It's close at times."

"I am not a fucking superhero," Logan snapped, looking back at them. Blood was dripping from his claws, and while the water was still moving, the spider wasn't. "Do I look like a fucking superhero?"

"No," Whoomp agreed. "Although, I don't know what they look like. Do they wear capes?"

"I think you'd rock a cape," Oz told him.

Logan just scowled at him, and Oz figured he deserved that. Nobody covered in demon spider blood wanted to be told they'd rock a cape.

* * *

It was astonishing to watch a domestic dispute between gods.

Right now they were only arguing, throwing very minor insults at each other, but Giles knew it could turn very ugly - and deadly - in a matter of moments. Although the room could very well explode, it was, for the time being, a welcome distraction.

He began muttering the spell under his breath, hands clasped together so no one noticed that he had a small throwing knife which now cut into his palm. Even dark magic he could use only once against a god, and it wouldn't stick, but the momentary advantage of surprise might give him a moment to maneuver.

Magic, being a part of the fundamental fabric of the universe, could be used against gods. Some gods; not all, and even then only when they weren't expecting it. Most, if they saw it coming, could simply do what Bob did and remove the power itself from their vicinity, rendering it useless. So you couldn't let them know what was about to happen to them. Since gods could often see right through you, this was a problem, but Ate had inadvertently solved it by being both a deeply unpleasant person and an old rival (ex?) of Raijin's, pulling all the attention away from him. Arba stood at the back of the room, looking annoyed and deeply confused. He hadn't expected a domestic disturbance any more than the rest of them, and wasn't looking at anyone else.

"Things are going to start happening in a moment," Giles whispered to John. "I suggest you get as far from me as you can. They'll target me, and you might get caught in the backwash."

"I can fight 'em too."

"Fire isn't going to work against gods. Just get clear, and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"You'll know it when you see it."

"You keep saying that. What if I don't? I wasn't the world's best student, man."

"Believe me, this will be hard to miss. Just get the girl and leave while you can."

The conversation was over, in spite of John's eagerness to continue, mainly because Raijin had flared up like a living supernova, and shouted, "I'll turn you into a slime worm, you washed up bitch!" But, interestingly enough, he didn't even try it. What did Ate have over him?

No matter. Giles closed his eyes and continued muttering the invocation, feeling the blood drip from his palm. Blood magic was powerful, and dark, and extracted a high price. But it wasn't the first time he'd used it or given into the so called "dark side". Sometimes you had no choice. Sometimes "white" magic just wasn't going to cut it.

He could feel it like this awful cancer in him, something dark and acidic, eating away at him, chewing in his gut and up along his spine, but at the same time there was a horrible elation, a high and a feeling of god like power that made him feel like the brightest star in the sky. There was no pain, no anxiety, just a rush ten thousand times better than sex. This was why it was so dangerous to use black magic. Not only was it addictive, but Giles knew that in reality, this high was a byproduct of something in him dying; endorphins released to kill the pain.

He knew he was ready when he felt like his body was too fragile to contain all the power in him, like it was on the verge of rupturing like an overfilled balloon. He opened his eyes, shouted the word, and the universe around him seemed to shatter into a billion shards of neon glass.

* * *

So the old guy was a mutant? Why didn't anyone tell him?

John thought the guy was kind of weird - he looked like a librarian, not a fighter, so he had no idea why he was here - but as soon as John saw blood dripping on the floor and realized it was coming from the old guy, he leaned over to tell him. (When was he cut? Or was he wounded before? Did one of those ugly things grab him or something?) But that's when Giles's eyes opened, and they were suddenly all black. Not just his eyes; John could see the blackness spreading out from them and into the veins of his face, making them show up like marker lines. That made him instantly lean back, mainly because he had no idea what power he had.

The old guy then shouted something that wasn't a word; well, it kinda sounded like one, it had syllables, but it was in a foreign language he didn't speak. For some reason, the word made him cringe, and it made something in his gut briefly twist and hurt, although he couldn't say why.

He must have closed his eyes against the big flash, because when he opened them, he was all alone.

John just sat there for a moment, alone in the white room save for all the empty chairs, and he thought maybe he'd been moved somehow until he saw Giles's blood was still on the floor.

Okay, so … the rest of them disappeared? The old guy was a teleporter like Nightcrawler or something?

John stood up and looked around, in case he was snowblind and there was some all white weirdo bleeding into the walls. Didn't seem like it. "Um, hello?" he asked. No response, no movement.

That was a good thing, right? So why did he feel so weird? Maybe because he never expected anyone to let him go solo so soon. And he had no fucking idea where he was and how to get out of here.

Still, the back wall looked a bit shimmery, like a heat mirage in the desert, and he started towards it. When he was within ten feet he let a burst of fire go, just to see if it caught the wall, but the fire went right through. So it was an illusion of some sort. That was the way out? Nothing to do but close his eyes and try and walk through.

It was like passing through a gauzy curtain with a slight electrostatic charge. Slightly uncomfortable, but nothing like what he was expecting. Of course the weirdness continued. Opening his eyes, he saw no white room, nothing that looked like what he had come from. He was in a narrow hall carved out of red rock, kind of like a narrow river channel. He touched it, and yeah, it was solid rock. Oddly warm, though. He thought maybe it was from the fireball he sent through ahead of him, but the opposite wall was just as solid and warm. Weird.

He had no idea what way to go, so he just picked one at random. He knew what he was supposed to do; the old guy said to find the girl and leave. He rather liked the idea of leaving, because he had no idea where the girl, Paloma, was, or how to find her. If he found an exit before he found her, well … he'd leave and go for help. Yeah, that sounded good. Storm and Kitty were out there somewhere, right? He could get them, and leave all this weird ass bullshit to them.

He knew coming back to the X-Men would be odd and uncomfortable, but he never expected to be caught up in shit like this. A straightforward fight he would have liked. Kicking some ass? Hell yeah. As much as Logan still kinda freaked him out - he had little doubt that he would kill him if he ever appeared to switch sides again, and that was a real pisser - he wanted to be on his team. Logan was the one who did the dirty work; he fought hard, occasionally killed, and John wanted to be on the X-Men's commando team, or whatever they called Logan's little sub-group. He didn't want to be a "peacekeeper", part of the Gandhi squad - fuck that noise. He wanted to be one of the last resorts. So that would be him and Logan, and … who else had a power that was pretty much just lethal? Well, Jean was dead. And Rogue took the "cure". That Eden kid? Saddiq? Maybe, if he was still around - he'd heard from some of the other kids he could kill someone with a toothpick, but he had no idea if that was true. Might be, though. The guy had all the emotions and personality of a Cylon.

John was pretty sure he must be coming to the end of this long river channel when a form suddenly appeared ahead of him, leaning drunkenly against the rock. It was that grey skinned guy, Arba, in his Humanoid form. He looked a bit like a zombie, and the amount of hate in his eyes as he glared at him didn't help. "You," he spat, shoving himself off the wall and stalking towards him.

Oh fuck. What was he supposed to do now?


	13. Chapter 13

13

Maybe it wouldn't be all that helpful, but sometimes you just had to go with what you knew.

John flicked on his lighter and hit Arba full in the face with a flamethrower blast of fire. He let out a startled, pain filled yelp, and staggered back as John continued to bathe him in fire. Arba's shirt burst into flame, suggesting it was polyester or something quite like it.

He sputtered and reeled as his skin crisped and a smell not unlike burning sausage filled the hallway, but sadly it wasn't enough. Arba used the wall to stagger forward, forcing his way through the flames towards him. He might have been trying to talk, but his throat was burnt enough that all he could do was making grisly grunting noises. John kept pouring on the fire, but he kept forcing himself onward, in spite of the flames. Yeah, he was fucked.

John thought he saw movement behind Arba, but it was just a flicker, a brief glint of silver … silver?

He stopped the flamethrower action just in time, as Logan rammed his claws into Arba's back and ripped towards the opposite wall, spraying his strangely purplish blood across the rock like splattered grape juice. Arba dropped to his knees, letting out a stifled grunt that was equal parts pain and surprise. "Oz, get him out of here," Logan said, slashing Arba's head in half - well, three even sections. Kinda half.

But even though you could see his brains (or whatever he had for brains) oozing out, Arba grabbed Logan and threw him into the rocks, hard enough that he made a sizable indent in it, and rocks cracked and broke, crumbling like dead skin. Logan slid down to the floor, struggling to breathe, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. You couldn't break his bones, but you could stomp him into a fine paste around the bones.

Arba's head was sealing itself; his skin had almost all grown back. He had Logan's healing factor times twenty thousand. But even as the black smears of his eyes settled on him, Logan sprung up from the ground and drove two of his claws straight into those eyes. Arba let out a strangled cry, and a virtually naked Oz skirted the two bloody, brawling figures and grabbed his arm as he headed the opposite way down the hall.

John pulled his arm out of his grip, but went along with him. "What happened to your clothes?"

He shrugged. "Wolves don't wear pants."

That was the oddest phrase that had ever been said to him, but he couldn't argue with it, as it was true. Before disappearing around the turn, they both glanced back at the continued, awful meaty thuds as Arba continued to pound Logan into ground chuck. A smart person would have played dead and stop aggravating the super powered freak, but Logan didn't know when to quit. Logan was on his back on the floor, getting pounded, but even as Logan spit blood, he gripped Arba's head with his feet, and with a loud crack he snapped the zombie's neck. (How fucking cool was that?! Why didn't Logan ever teach them to do that?! Where did you learn that?) The funny thing was, it didn't stop him beating on him, but because Arba's head was now at a weird angle, he was missing, his piledriver fists missing Logan's head and smashing down into the rock, leaving pothole sized divots. Logan kicked him in the chest and tossed him off, but he wasn't moving fast. Then again, he seemed to be bleeding from every orifice. How he was conscious and capable of movement was anybody's guess.

"He is way more intense than YouTube led me to believe," Oz said.

John snorted, although it was hard to say it was a laugh. He didn't feel much like laughing right now. "He's fucking nuts."

"Sometimes that helps," Oz admitted. John couldn't argue with that. Although he wondered how long it would be before Arba beat Logan into hummus and came after them. A minute at most? He had a good healing factor, but Arba had the obvious edge, and seemed ten thousand times stronger than Juggernaut. Also, judging from the fact that his head was cut in pieces and his neck snapped and it didn't slow him down, he couldn't be killed either. They were so fucked. What were they going to do?

Oz stopped suddenly, and turned to face him. "Where are we going?"

"Fuck if I know. Away from the freakazoid, I guess."

His brow furrowed as he frowned. Wow, he had lots of piercing and tattoos, didn't he? It went with the green Mohawk, he supposed. "Where's Giles?"

"I have no fucking clue. He did some kinda teleport thing and took everyone away, although I guess not Arba. Don't know why."

Oz looked down at the floor as he thought, and out of the corner of his eye, John noticed what looked like a flattened brown splotch with huge eyes on slender stalks squelching down the wall. He got ready to flame on - _what the fuck was that?! _- when Oz said, "Whoomp, this is John. John, Whoomp."

"Whoomp?" Was he serious?

"Does the claw man like pain?" the Whoomp thing said. How John had no idea. Where was its mouth?

"I don't think so. It's just part of the superhero gig." Oz finally looked back up at him. "Aren't we supposed to be looking for a Slayer?"

"You mean that girl? Yeah, but I have no idea where we start."

"I do." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. (He had a gold stud on the side of his nose. That stayed in when he wolfed out? Weird.) He opened his eyes and pointed further down the canyon. "She's that way."

"You have super smelling too?"

Oz shrugged. "Probably not as good as Logan's, but down here, when the Humans are just us? Yeah, I'm brilliant. This way."

Oz just walked off, Whoomp (that couldn't have been his name) slinking along the wall like some kind of living road kill pancake, and John realized he had little choice but to follow. Unless he wanted to go back towards the wet thuds of Logan being beaten to a Slurpee like consistency.

It was a really awful time to remember why he never liked being a hero.

* * *

Giles heard the arguing before he gained enough consciousness to open his eyes, although only one voice was raised. The other was low and deadly, the timbre of voice one used before slaughtering someone with a piece of hardware. No wonder the other sounded so desperate.

At first he thought he was blind, as he saw nothing but white, but his eyes adjusted and he remembered that this was how this "room" was: a white on white space that echoed eternity in its unbounded, bright nothingness.

Raijin was in what could have been the center of the room, looking like a regular person in a grey designer suit. Which was why it was funny he was arguing so desperately with what looked like a nine year old girl in a frilly velvet party dress. Except the girl had black eyes, and an expression of infinite coldness that suggested her youthful countenance was the most bald faced lie ever perpetrated.

Teleporting them all to the Senior Partners' dimensional intersection - in other words, the top floor of one of Wolfram and Harts' skyscrapers - was actually a last resort, plan C, but as soon as he realized they were dealing with Raijin, it became the best option.

The Senior Partners were all about loyalty. Why else did they make their minions stay with them even beyond death? As far as they were concerned, once you picked a side, you stuck with it for good.

Raijin started bad, and then switched sides. No matter that he switched sides back, the Senior Partners would see him as fickle and weak. And they really didn't like weak.

"Oh, so you're still alive?" Ate said to him. Giles moved his eyes enough to see she was sitting on the floor close to him. His eyes were all he could move. He felt like a broken doll, loose limbed and full of sawdust that threatened to shift every time he sucked in a breath.

"For the moment."

"I thought you gave up black magic, Ripper."

"It has its uses every now and then."

"You know what you've done to yourself, right?"

"I assumed I wasn't leaving this place alive," he told her. He knew the Senior Partners wouldn't be pleased with him crashing their dimensional nexus, setting aside the fact that he'd been working with Angel against them. He kind of doubted they were members of his fan club.

"Good assumption. Although it would have been nice for you to mention this was a suicide mission."

"I thought you preferred a surprise." After a brief pause, he asked, "So you and Raijin were involved?"

"Uch. Don't ask. It was eons ago."

They could hear that Raijin and the Senior Partners' representative were arguing, but they couldn't hear the actual words. Giles imagined that the Senior Partners were keeping them from overhearing anything potentially useful. Although the little girl didn't move and didn't raise her voice above the sinister monotone, she was clearly winning this argument. Raijin was still arguing loudly, desperately, but he must have known it was a lost cause. He could pledge fidelity to them, but since he had a history of shifting whenever it behooved him, they'd never believe him.

"Where's everyone else?" Giles was sure he'd brought everyone in the room, save for John, with him.

Ate shrugged, staring so intently at Raijin and the little girl it looked like she was trying to lip read. "They disappeared shortly after we got here. I guess the Partners tossed them out. But why keep us? Okay, you I can see keeping, they probably want to disembowel you with paperclips, but why me?"

"I don't know." So did they kill them or send them back? They might kill lesser demons, just because, but it was more than likely they sent Arba back - he was the god equivalent of a leper. They wouldn't even dirty their hands killing him.

A problem, but not a huge one. Giles was counting on Logan to simply assume leadership and finish the mission. No, he couldn't kill Arba and he probably knew it, but that wouldn't stop him from fighting him, even if Arba did kill him. Logan was a born kamikaze; he would take the hit for the team. It probably wouldn't occur to him not to. On the good side of that, it was unlikely Arba could permanently kill Logan. Either his bizarrely resilient healing factor would kick him back into life, or Bob would show up and - to quote Xander - open up a can of godly whoop ass on Arba. Giles hoped for the latter, simply because it would spare Logan some pain. But he knew he couldn't count on that.

Even though Raijin and the little girl were still arguing, the little girl appeared before them, an exact mirror image twin. "You don't give up, do you?" she said, her voice multilayered and menacing.

Giles glanced at her unfathomably dark eyes, and admitted, "It's a character flaw."

"We know," she said, and then she smiled, a sickly, menacing rictus grin that made him feel cold to the very pit of his soul. "We've been counting on it."


	14. Chapter 14

14

Giles refused to react. They were fucking with him, and just wanted him to be scared. If he reacted at all, he would be playing into their hands.

So he kept all expression from his face, which he felt growing up British had allowed him to do, but inside it felt like a cold claw had gripped his intestines and refused to let go. "You were expecting me to do this?"

The little girl that was the current, mocking form of the Senior Partners grinned at him in a savage, leering way. "You mortals always see the small picture. No wonder you're always playing catch up."

Worse and worse. He felt the coldness bleeding through him now, oozing like ice water into his veins. No. Oh no.

"Oh, stop with the villain monologue," Ate snapped.

The little girl looked over at her in annoyance. "What?"

"You know damn well what I mean. 'Before I kill you, here's my evil plan in its entirety.' Is anyone actually that self-impressed and stupid?"

The girl's black eyes narrowed. "Don't make it worse for yourself, Ate."

She scoffed derisively. "If you're gonna kill me, kill me, and spare me the bullshit."

Before they could, Giles asked, "You don't just mean Arba's plan, do you?"

That regained him the attention of the Senior Partners, who snickered derisively. "You're the Watcher. You tell me."

"What is this nonsense about?" Ate demanded impatiently.

"The Slayers," Giles guessed.

The feral grin on the Partner's face confirmed it. "How stupid do you think we are? Do you think we didn't know what was going on? Did you think we didn't allow it?"

Giles felt cold and now vaguely nauseous. Oh no. "You knew we were going to activate them."

"And we helped." The little girl was so gleeful she was almost laughing. "Your Charles Darwin got some things right, you know. Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. Adaptation."

It all sank in like a two ton glacier settling at the bottom of a gelid bay. But Ate was missing key pieces of this conversation, impatience showing on her face. "What are you blathering about?"

The Senior Partners, for whatever reason, decided to indulge her. "The strongest will survive, and become stronger. Gone is the dead weight, the inbred monstrosities, the poor excuses for monsters. And nature abhors a vacuum."

"More Slayers equals more demons," Giles said, seeing it clearly for the first time. How had he not seen it before? "Worse demons."

"Harder, faster, stronger, better," the little girl crowed. "The next generation will be awesome in its fearsomeness. And you will be responsible, Rupert. Thank you. We never could have done it without you."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ate insisted. "More Slayers means more dead demons, not better ones."

"You're forgetting the balance, Ate," the Senior Partner replied. "If there is a swing too far to one side, there will always be a similar swing in the opposite direction. It's always been that way. Thank the Powers That Be."

She made a noise of disgust. "Those pretentious gits. I'd rather not. Why the hell am I still here, anyways? If you're gonna kill me, would you do it already? I'm bored."

"Kill you? Ate, you're mistaken. We want to give you an opportunity to return to your former glory."

"What?" both she and Giles replied in unison.

Giles had thought things were bad enough, and yet somehow, they had now gotten worse.

* * *

Since Oz had nothing, it was all up to John now. Whoopty fucking do.

But at least it did give John an opportunity to play around. He created a fire "dragon" (okay, it wasn't dragon shaped, it was a snake if you were really generous, but that was it; it was a big tube of fire) that he let go out before them, scaring the demons (?) ahead of them out of the halls. You'd think, if this was hell, they'd be used to fire, but apparently not. He was glad, as that was pretty much all he had. If Whoomp had anything to add to defense, he didn't say. Or do. He did nothing but squelch behind them on the wall, in violation of all known laws of physics. Why the hell was he - assuming it was a he; how did you tell? - tagging along with them anyways? Maybe he was a friend of Oz's.

Oz had sniffed Paloma out, to a side cave where she was chained to a wall. John had scared the demons guarding her away with his fireworks display, although really, as dungeons went, it was kind of sad. It looked like the ad hoc set of a no budget porn video.

"Who the hell are you guys?" Paloma demanded, as Oz tried to figure out how to get the chains off.

"I'm a werewolf, and he's a fire guy. We're here to rescue you. Or something. Really, I was added last minute," Oz said, examining one of the wrist shackles. "And I did have clothes then. Just so you know. I had this really cool t-shirt that I'm gonna miss. I wish I could file for workman's comp."

Whoomp squelched up the far side wall, and said, "Umm, key. I think."

One of the fleeing demons must have dropped it. Wow - ugly and incompetent. If this was hell, they needed to hire better people.

Paloma was kind of pretty, actually, dark hair and dark eyes, like Penelope Cruz's younger sister, but she was looking at them like they were the fuck craziest people she had ever seen. "Are you mutants or what?"

"I am," John volunteered. "I'm with the X-Men." Was he? Oh well, no point in letting little details like that get in the way. "I'm Pyro."

Her brow furrowed in consternation. "Pyro? The guy who defected to Magneto's camp? You're a bad guy."

"No I'm not. I'm back." He paused briefly. "It was a phase." Actually, he'd be damned if he knew why he was back, except that after Magneto was forcibly cured, the Brotherhood became a joke. Oh, he tried to lead it in the right direction, but kids nowadays seemed like total idiots, and then Logan threatened to kill him by pinning him against the wall with his fist to his forehead, and ... well damn, he couldn't trace his decision back at all. It was like he woke up one day and decided he needed to not be "evil" anymore. Which made no sense at all - he wasn't "evil" to begin with - but since his life made very little sense, he couldn't say he was surprised. Shit happened, and sometimes it happened in ways that couldn't be explained or excused. You'd just think, if he threw the last few years of his life away, he'd have a better explanation.

Paloma was staring at him in open disbelief, but not for long, as Whoomp was right about the key - Oz got her unchained. She rubbed her wrists and thanked him, subtly stepping away from the mostly nude green haired guy. "Do you trust this clown?" At first, he thought she was asking him about Oz, but he suddenly realized she was asking Oz about him.

"Hey," he protested weakly. Was he not in hell for her? Did that not prove he was a good guy now?

Oz just shrugged, and said in that laconic way of his, "I've had no problems with him."

"The fire thing's kinda neat," Whoomp offered.

Paloma looked at the flattened slug demon thing. "What are you?"

"That's Whoomp," Oz said. "He wants waffles."

"I love waffles," Whoomp confirmed.

Okay - this was a collective psychotic break, wasn't it? None of this was actually happening. They were probably all on a subway platform, ranting about the Illuminati in their drinking water and shitting their pants.

"Can we just go?" John finally asked. "Logan can't hold out as a punchin' bag forever, although I know he's crazy enough to try."

"Logan?" Paloma asked, and then stopped in her tracks, wide eyed with surprise. "Do you mean Wolverine? He's here?"

"Yeah." He hated the defensive tone he heard in his own voice. But did she have to sound so suspicious of him, yet so excited to hear Logan was here? It really wasn't fair.

"Wow. I wanted to meet him," she said, walking past him out of the cave.

"You're welcome," John shouted after her sarcastically. She didn't respond.

Oz tossed the key aside and shrugged. "The guy's hot. Chicks dig that."

"You could break your hand on his torso," Whoomp said. "Well, if you have a hand."

John just glared at them. "You're both fucking nuts."

"I like peanuts, but only if they're honey roasted," Whoomp said.

"Cut that out!" John snapped, and then turned and stomped after Paloma. He heard Oz say, presumably to Whoomp, "Not a big fan of legumes, I guess."

All of Logan's friends were fucking nuts. Every single one of them. Would it kill him to have a sane friend?

He found Paloma standing stock still in the hall, watching the bloody slugfest. Logan was so covered in blood he may as well have been wearing a red t-shirt (and face mask, and turtleneck), but somehow he was still going. Still bleeding, still losing the fight, and yet somehow still fighting. He was like the fucking Energizer Bunny of punishment.

"Stay down, you stupid fucker," Arba growled down at him. "You can't beat me."

Sad but true. None of them could beat him. They were screwed.

Arba started stomping towards them, flexing his bloody hands. "Where do you think you're going, little girl?"

Logan raised himself up to his hands and knees, blood drooling from his mouth and dripping from his nose, but his eyes were full of as much calculated anger as they were of pain. "All at once," he growled, his voice sounding like gravel in a trash compactor. "Pyro, burn him inside out." And with that he lunged forward and cut Arba off at the knees. Literally - his lower legs fell one way and Arba fell another.

"Son of a bitch!" Arba yelled, sounding more annoyed than anything else.

"What?" John asked, but since Arba had taken a blind swing at Logan while falling and clocked him in the head, John was on his own. Burn him inside out? How did he do that? That other dude was made of flames, but not this one. He'd have to get the fire in him first, and how did you do that?

"What's the problem?" Oz asked him.

"He doesn't have fire in him, that's the problem! How do I do that?"

"Fire in him?" Paloma repeated dubiously, like she hadn't heard him correctly.

Arba had turned himself around, on hands and bloody stumps, and grabbed his severed legs, which he pressed against their respective stumps. They seemed to immediately adhere back on, the skin briefly flowing like liquid. Was that how he healed so fast? No wonder nothing Logan was doing was working - even chopping this guy up wasn't a hindrance.

Arba turned around to face Logan, but as soon as he did, Logan slashed his lower jaw off with his claws and tossed the damn jaw part down the corridor as far as he could. Arba grabbed Logan's skull and introduced it to the floor several times, with deep, disturbing thudding sounds. It was a good thing he had an adamantium skull, or his brain would be a pulpy mush oozing out his ears. Of course, maybe it already was.

"Bob, it's about fucking time you got here!" Oz exclaimed suddenly.

Arba stopped and looked around frantically, a big hole in his face that his jaw used to cover up, his tongue dangling out like a seatbelt stuck in a car door. It was healing, though, the flesh and bone miraculously growing back as they watched. John looked around for Bob too, but Oz nudged him and nodded towards Arba. "Now."

Oh, it was a distraction. Logan had given him a way to get fire inside Arba; now he only had to hope it worked. John flicked his lighter and sent a ball of fire straight down Arba's gaping gullet. He grabbed his throat and made a choking noise, as John concentrated on trying to keep the fire alive and blooming deep within Arba. There was oxygen in his lungs - or whatever passed for his lungs - right? He concentrated on sending it there, on the air within feeding the flame, keeping it going. He'd never sent a flame inside anyone before - that had never even come up as an option when he was exploring his powers with Magneto - and he didn't know if it would work. But goddamn, this proved Mystique was right: Magneto always said Logan was a dumb beast, but she always said that yeah, he was a beast, but he could be inventively vicious. She had said it like it was an admirable thing, and who knew, maybe it was. At least in this scenario.

The flame was still going, John could feel it responding to him - how he couldn't actually say or explain, but fire was like an urge, a sixth sense - but it was struggling and so was he. So was Arba, who was coughing and choking, his healing factor fighting against the constant burning even as his jaw mostly healed over. Logan stabbed him in the back and ripped to the side, severing his spinal cord, although that just seemed to piss Arba off. He turned and started pounding Logan again, who just stabbed randomly, cutting him in a hundred places, making him leak blood like a sieve. He wasn't healing as fast now, which must have been Logan's plan.

"I need to get in there," Oz muttered. It took all John's concentration to focus on the flame, so he was only peripherally aware of Oz and Paloma. Honestly, he found himself morbidly curious about this - how long could he keep a fire alive in someone? In an ordinary person, breathing in fire would be enough to kill them, but this guy possessed the mother of all healing factors. This was a chance to answer a question he could never even ponder in the real world.

Oz turned to Paloma and said, "I need you to hurt me."

She reacted to that statement the way anybody probably would. "Are you fucking crazy?"

"I can't wolf out without help. Hurt me."

"Fuck off, weirdo."

John might have offered to scorch Oz if he thought he could. But maybe he was too ADD or something, but he was pretty sure he couldn't keep two flames going at once, not under these conditions. Maybe if he wasn't struggling to keep baking Arba like a turkey on a spit he could've, but right now things were too weird.

But things, as always, got weirder. Oz suddenly grabbed Paloma by the throat and slammed her against the wall. "I said hurt me, bitch!" Oh, great, now he was having a psychotic break.

Paloma kicked Oz in the groin, which really must have hurt considering he wasn't even wearing any pants, and punched him, so hard blow flew. Oz staggered back, grabbing his face. "Don't you fucking touch me, asshole!" Paloma added unnecessarily. (Seriously - you punch a guy, your point has been made.)

After a moment, Oz looked up, blood oozing from his split lower lip, and his eyes an intense and eerie yellow. "Thank you. Now stand back."

And Oz started to change.


	15. Chapter 15

15

It happened so fast it was kind of hard to believe. John wasn't sure he had seen it, and yet he knew he had. It was just so weird that his mind almost refused to process it.

Oz was standing there one moment, kind of Human, and then it was like his skin exploded with fur, his bones shifting so rapidly it was like his skin was boiling as everything moved or did whatever it was it was doing. There was this weird noise, like someone smooshing a bag of potato chips while someone else threw meat against the wall, but it quickly died as Oz howled like a dog. Well, wolf.

John flicked his lighter and had a rather large torch like flame going as the Oz wolf got to its four feet, ready to singe it if it went after him or Paloma, but luckily it turned towards the noise of combat and sicced Arba, who was still trying to duck Logan's constant dismemberment. Maybe it just smelled demon and went for it; maybe it had to be the big bad guy in any room. Could you say with werewolves?

With Oz busy elsewhere, he was able to concentrate on the flame inside Arba. Again, keeping this thing going was going to be a pain. He was already sweating from exertion, and he was standing right here.

Now Arba had his hands full fighting with Logan and the werewolf at the same time. Logan could take an impressive beatdown and still be reasonably functional; this was doubly true of the werewolf. Arba hammered it with blows that could have cracked the walls, and occasionally made the wolf yelp or whimper, but it didn't cease its attacks at all. It kept going for him like he was wearing a steak necklace, and Arba shouted, "Fucking parasite! Get out of my dimension!"

Parasite? Were werewolves parasites? How did that work? Or was it just a figure of speech?

No matter. Arba had been distracted by Oz too long, long enough for Logan to drive his claws right through the center of his head. The claw tips exploded out his cheeks and nose, slicing off the tip, and making Arba freeze for a moment, long enough for Oz to sink his long, impressively ugly jaw into his gut. Oz started to pull one way, and Logan popped his other set of claws high in Arba's chest. "Wanna tug of war, pooch?" he grated.

Logan wasn't kidding. They both pulled hard on Arba for several seconds, until there was this noise like ... well, John couldn't describe it. It was wet and meaty and yet also crackly, like a log on a fire. And Arba tore in half, or less than half, as the werewolf got the biggest piece, tearing him from the stomach down, while Logan fell backward with the upper head and chest portion.

Paloma made a kind of retching noise and turned away, and John figured he might have joined her puking if he wasn't concentrating so hard on the fire.

The funny thing now was he could see it. With him ripped in half and his guts plopping on the floor, flames licked out a hole torn in Arba's lungs, crisping the flesh along the edges. So he could do it, it was just incredibly hard. He didn't know if he needed to keep it going or not anymore, but he did, if only because it was much easier now.

The werewolf was digging through Arba's lower half like it was looking for a place to bury its bones, flesh flying everywhere. Logan was more methodical, simply dismembering his portion of Arba and throwing the pieces away from each other, in combinations that wouldn't work even if they glommed together (the scalp with a hand, for instance; a shoulder with the face). He finally told him, "Kill the fireworks, kid," and John let the flame finally die.

He was oddly winded. He had to lean against the wall, panting for breath, sweat trickling like oil down his back. "This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," Paloma said, hand to her mouth, staring at Oz and Logan as they continued ripping up Arba like a party favor.

"I've seen him do worse," he replied, referring to Logan, but in retrospect he wasn't sure that was true. He'd never seen him help rip someone in half before. It just sounded like the thing to say.

Finally they were done parting Arba out like an old Chevy. Logan was covered in blood - now purple as well as standard red - and was sitting against the wall also panting for breath, his eyes curiously glazed and far away, like he was going to pass out any second now. Oz hadn't so much dismembered his part of Arba than mulched him, and possibly eaten a couple of hunks, as John wasn't sure there were enough scraps to say it was all him. With a low growling noise like the rumble of a finely tuned car, it lowered its big head and started stalking towards Logan.

"Shit," Paloma exclaimed, and tugged on John's arm, to alert him to the problem. He was so exhausted he wasn't even sure he could call up much of a flame.

It wasn't necessary. Sitting on the floor, he was at eye level with the wolf, and he glared at it, popping his claws and snarling, his upper lip curling over his teeth. The funny thing was, Logan's growl sounded a lot like Oz's; they were virtually indistinguishable. They were motionless for the longest thirty seconds of John's life, just staring and growling at each other, until Oz's ears flicked back in annoyance, and it turned away, towards a part of Arba's body that seemed to be crawling back towards a big assembly of organs. Now it was crawling down the Oz wolf's esophagus.

"What the fuck man?" John asked Logan, as that was really all he could say. What the fuck man - that summed up his entire day.

"I'm the alpha predator here," Logan said, his voice still a low, painful grumble (presumably Arba had damaged his vocal cords at some point, and they were still healing). "It knows that now. Animals ain't stupid."

"You've stared down animals before?" Paloma asked, surprised.

It didn't surprise John in the least. He probably went around Canada staring down every moose, beaver, and polar bear that crossed his path. Fuck Tarzan being King of the Jungle; Logan was King of All Big Nasty Things With Teeth That Could Eat You. Way cooler title, but it didn't fit on a t-shirt.

Logan didn't answer, just said, "You're gonna hafta knock him out before he turns on ya."

John had been wondering about that. "How do we do that?"

Logan had that glazed look in his eye again. Had he been fighting unconsciousness this whole time? On the one hand you wouldn't think that was possible, but on the other, Logan was such a stubborn shithead that if anyone could do it, it would be him. So yeah, maybe. "You're gonna hafta, girlie. Yer the Slayer."

Paloma seemed stagestruck with fear, her eyes wide and shiny. "But, uh ... so, is he a werewolf? Is it true you can only kill them with silver?"

Logan shrugged but nodded at the same time. "Yep, pretty much. These fuckers don't die."

John was tempted to point out the same could be said about him, but didn't. Even in a compromised state, Logan could still hold it against him and save the surprise beat down for later.

Paloma seemed really reluctant, but after a moment, clearly not wanting to seem like a coward in front of Logan, she darted forward and grabbed Oz by the back of the legs. He was just turning his big body around to bite her when she spun towards the wall and slammed him head first into it, so hard that they heard something not so much snap as explode. The wolf didn't even have time to make a noise; it was just a limp bundle of fur she dropped to the ground. "Damn, girl," John said, surprised she had that kind of strength in her. It didn't look like she had it. Was that why they called them Slayers?

"I didn't kill him, did I?" she asked Logan nervously.

He shook his head. "He's still breathin'." And after a moment, John saw it, the rise and fall of the wolf's midsection. Goddamn, they built werewolves tough, didn't they?

Logan pointed down the hall, and said, "I smelled the subway that way. Take Oz and go. I'll be with ya shortly."

"You're not coming with us?" Paloma asked, sounding disappointed.

Logan shook his head. "I'm gonna rest up, see if Giles ever joins me. Go on."

He wanted to pass out in peace, did he? Fine. John felt like he had enough strength to walk out of here, but he hadn't counted on having to carry Oz too. He went over to him and lifted a foot, but that's about all he could lift. Shit, he was heavy too. Who'd have guessed?

"But … why?" Paloma asked, sounding near tears. Oh god lady, give it a break! "We can't leave -"

"Go!" Logan barked. "That's an order."

She looked too freaked out to argue, suggesting she knew nothing about Logan at all. Yes, he would yell at the girls as easily as the guys, but one of the first things you learned about him was his natural reticence to be mean to women. It was really weird, and almost inexplicable, but much of Logan was. Of course, considering he was covered in blood, that added an extra layer of freak, and he supposed he couldn't blame her, but if he was a woman, he'd so use Logan's weird gender kryptonite thing against him. (But he wasn't, so he couldn't. And women who attacked him or someone else were pretty much fair game - ask Mystique, or dig up Jean and ask her.)

Paloma turned, looking like she was on the verge of tears, but she sucked it up, which was a point in her favor. "Can you pick him up?" John asked, pointing at Oz. Well, she seemed pretty strong, and she'd picked him up before.

She scowled, but she did, slinging him over her shoulder like a pelt she was lugging to the trading post. John led the way, but he looked back once to see Logan sagging against the wall with his eyes closed. Passed out? Probably. It was about fucking time! Arba seemed to be slowly pooling together, but John wondered if the fact that some of him was now in Oz's stomach or stuck in his teeth would make a difference in his ability to regenerate. He certainly wasn't moving fast.

John flicked his lighter and had a small ball of flame hovering over the open palm of his hand, ready to fling at the first demon who tried to give them shit. He should just hoped that they didn't swarm them before he got all his strength back.

But he bet they would. After everything that had happened, he doubted things would become easy now.


	16. Chapter 16

16

The fire still scared the few demons they encountered off, which was a relief. He was tired. Really, all John wanted to do was sit down, maybe have a beer, do anything but climb fucking rocks. So what was he doing? _Climbing fucking rocks. _Goddamn it, he hated being a "hero". Why did he come back to it again? He wished he could remember.

It turned out there was a way up the cliff, although it wasn't immediately apparent from the top. No, you had to be down in the canyon to see the fucking thing, so maybe it wasn't as stupid as it seemed on first blush. Still, he felt like a moron.

After the first couple of feet, demons stopped trying to get them, mainly because they seemed to be in some sort of tizzy. Was it Arba being torn into a bunch of bite sized chunks? That was bound to throw anyone off their game, especially if it happened to you.

He and Paloma managed to get back up to the cliff, and looking down, he got a bit dizzy. It felt like they'd climbed a mile straight up, even though that couldn't have been true. It just felt like it.

Paloma looked back down, shifting Oz on her shoulder, and asked, "Do you think he'll be all right?"

Again with Logan! Who the hell actually rescued her? Not him. Okay, yeah, he was keeping Arba occupied so they could actually find her, but still, he was physically there. He scared off the demon guards with fire. Didn't that earn him a single iota of concern?

No, apparently not. Hadn't she seen him rip a guy in pieces? How do you have a crush on a guy who was capable of ultra violence on a scale unimaginable except in a really extreme horror film? It seemed impossible, but hey, he didn't know this chick - she could be shit crazy. And frankly, he was leaning towards that right now. "Logan? He heals, that's his thing. He'll be fine. Now let's move." And how the fuck was he a good guy? People who were willing to tear other people up were usually lumped in the bad guy category. But no, Logan gets the Brock Sampson pass and is allowed to kill 'cause he's on the "good" side. What_ever. _Why didn't he get a pass?

He walked ahead, without bothering to check if she was following, wondering if Logan was right about this. Sure, it looked like the tunnel they took coming in here, but all rock tunnels pretty much looked the same, and he saw no sign of a subway tunnel or track, and he certainly didn't smell it. (No, he didn't have super smelling, but you didn't need to, not with a New York subway tunnel. You could smell the piss and malt liquor two miles out on a windy day.)

Then he started to hear this noise. "What's that?" Paloma asked, confirming she was behind him.

"Fuck if I know." But hadn't Logan complained of a noise only he could hear before the subway tunnel gave way to hell's front porch? The old British fruit had said it was … what the fuck had he said it was? A dimensional … thingymabob. Supposedly normal Humans couldn't hear it, but now that they could, just barely, at the edge of their hearing … was that bad or good? A positive development, or further proof that they were fucked in the ass with a chainsaw? Sadly, there was no one to ask.

They just walked on until the noise became almost unbearable, and then, for no reason at all, the sound disappeared, and the smell of oil, piss, and spilled beer hit him like a two by four. "Fuck me," he said, staggering a bit from the disorientation. Hellish underground light was replaced by almost absolute darkness, and his eyes needed to adjust before he regained his balance. But he didn't fall on his ass, so that was something.

"Where are we?" Paloma asked, sounding surprised.

"Subway tunnel. Didn't know it was the entrance to hell? Well, now you do. It explains the A train."

"They brought me down here?"

"What don't you understand, Gump? Yes, they brought you down here." He paused a moment, trying to figure out what was odd about that statement. "Who brought you here?"

"Those … guys." She paused so much he wondered what the hard part of that answer was. Weird.

But he didn't care, and he didn't know when the next train was due, so it was probably best to get off the tracks as soon as possible. He started walking, avoiding the tracks and sticking close to the wall on the near side. Eventually they saw dim light ahead, and what looked like the edge of a platform. "Those guys, huh? Random guys? Guys who could have been women, you really aren't sure? She-males?"

"Do you have to be a dick?"

"Yeah. Ask anybody." Okay, hot chick was hiding something? Why? What was the point? He didn't even care.

He spied movement and flicked his lighter, but he thought he saw white hair. "Hey, that you guys?" In retrospect, John realized he'd added no qualifiers, and anyone could have answered that question. But hopefully only a few selected people would know who was asking.

"John?" Storm replied, as he and the hot chick came out of the tunnel. Storm and Kitty were on the eerily abandoned platform.

"Paloma!" Kitty exclaimed happily, jumping down to the tracks. Then she noticed what she was carrying, and her smile died on her face. "And a big ugly dog. What's that?"

"Don't you see the green hair on top there?" John asked. "It's Oz in wolf form."

"Oh." Kitty still seemed unconvinced. But he still did have some green hair, right on top of his head.

Storm peered over their shoulders, at the darkness inside the tunnel. "Where's Logan and Giles?"

He sighed, wondering if anybody would ever be happy to see him. "Giles teleported out to who the hell knows where, and Logan hung back to keep the bad guy engaged so we could get away. And also pass out for a couple of minutes without us seeing him do it."

Storm looked vaguely alarmed, her blue eyes widening. "You left him alone?"

"He ordered us to," Paloma said, sounding close to tears.

"Yeah, he was a real dick about it," John confirmed.

She scowled at him, for the language he guessed, then asked, "What bad guy?"

He shrugged. "Demi-god supposedly. Big ugly guy, stronger than your average tank, who can regenerate quickly after being dismembered."

She shuddered. "Sounds wonderful. Can Logan hold his own against him?"

John shrugged again. "Not really, but he doesn't give up, so he makes up for it in assholism." At her dirty look, he added, "Hey, he said that himself once!"

"I don't care, I'd rather you not repeat it."

Again he shrugged, and then hauled himself up on to the platform so he could sit on the edge. He was tired. Paloma laid Oz down on the platform too, although she was still down on the tracks with Storm and Kitty. He flicked his lighter nervously, wondering if he should just spill the beans. He really wasn't a snitch.

"We'll go get him. You two … three stay here."

"I don't think you should," Paloma said quickly. "It's another dimension, and there's no weather down there, or at least not that I could tell. I don't know if your powers would work."

Storm paused, clearly mulling it over, and John decided he'd had about all he was going to take. "Wow, lady, when are you gonna cut the shit?"

Storm gave him a scolding look. "John."

"Don't crawl up my ass, she's the one full of shit."

Her eyebrows made a vee as she looked between them, Paloma shooting him a brief, startled glance. What, she thought he was an idiot, that he wouldn't notice? If she'd wanted him to play along, he was willing; all she had to do was at least acknowledge his existence. But she didn't, so he was going to hang her out to dry. "My powers would work down there?"

"I got no fucking idea. What I'm talking about is I don't think she was kidnapped more than she was double crossed."

Paloma scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest and feigning indignance. "What the hell are you talking about? I don't even know you."

The look Storm gave him was curious, probably skeptical, but not dismissive. "Why do you say that?"

Paloma was giving him an evil look, and he knew she was a lot stronger than he was, but he kept flicking his lighter. Sure, she could probably grab him and mess him up, but he could greet her with a faceful of fire, and he bet she wouldn't heal as fast as Arba, or even Logan. She must have gotten the message, as she hadn't moved. Yet. "I thought it was kinda funny that she was so obsessed with Logan, so worried about him, I figured she had a major crush. And maybe she does, but why would she worry so much? 'Cause she's not afraid of leaving him with the demons 'cause he could get hurt, but because she's afraid she'll be blamed for what he does. She wasn't surprised by where she was or what was happening, not even when Logan and Oz took Arba down, and nearly slipped and admitted she knew the guys who kidnapped her on our way back here."

"That's a lie!" she exclaimed, although nervous sweat had already beaded on her forehead. "He's making this up."

"Sister, I'm a fucking weasel," he told her. "And it takes one to know one."

Storm looked between them for a moment, while Paloma continued to protest. "Storm, it's a lie. I don't know why he's being such a vicious little asshole and making things up about me, but -"

"It explains a lot," Storm said, fixing her with a cool glare. "That's why you were so scared when you came to the school, wasn't it? You got in over your head; maybe you knew they were going to be betray you. So you ran, and decided that we would protect you."

Paloma was shaking her head urgently, and a sort of pleading fear filled her eyes. "No, you can't believe him -"

"I shouldn't believe him," she corrected. "But strangely enough, I don't think he's lying. This time."

"Hey," he protested, although Storm ignored him. Okay, yeah, he'd been a lying bastard in the past, but he wasn't this time. He looked around to get some support from Kitty - assuming he'd get some support - but discovered she was gone. "Where's Kitty?"

Now Storm and even Paloma glanced around, but she didn't appear to be with them anymore.

That was probably the good thing about becoming intangible - you could literally sink into the woodwork.


	17. Chapter 17

17

Kitty got a feeling she was in for some strange stuff when she felt the dimensional opening as she passed through it. She could hear it too, but that wasn't the point. The point was, she never felt anything while intangible.

How could she feel anything? She wasn't, for all intents and purposes, real anymore. She'd slipped through the tunnel - literally; it was a short cut - and ventured deeper into the subway than she had ever gone. Truth be told, she was scared to come into the subway alone, although that seemed stupid. Whenever she was scared, she just became intangible. It was a reflex, actually; thanks to Logan, the instant something scary happened, she went intangible. He was a scary teacher, what with his occasionally charging her out of nowhere, but he was actually good in getting you prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

So when she was scared she went intangible. Nothing could touch her, from Freddy Krueger to flesh eating dragons to soldiers with flamethrowers. It was a nice feeling. But did it stop her being scared? Not really. She wished it would give her more courage. But that just brought her back to another thing Logan told her once: courage was sometime nothing more than keeping going when all you really wanted to do was stop. She had that down. She was running through these dark, scary tunnels, kind of wishing she could have borrowed Pyro's power so she could have some light, and she was pretty sure she heard rats, and nothing creeped her out more than big New York sewer rats, which were pretty much a special breed all their own. Kind of like wild dogs in Australia were called dingoes, rats in New York should be called frats, as in fucking huge, mean rats. But frat guys might object to that.

She heard the noise, but didn't think much of it. It sounded kind of like a Theremin, one of those old timey instruments they abused the hell out of in old horror and sci-fi movies. It was faint and annoying, but she could ignore it. But the sound got louder, and then suddenly, at the peak of it, she felt something. Like a heat shimmer through her, as the subway tunnel suddenly became a red rock tunnel lit by an ambient but unclear source.

She paused, becoming tangible again and panted for breath. God, that was weird. How could she feel that? She shouldn't have been able to feel anything; she never really had before. (Well, okay, reaching into that god guy, she kind of felt a distance furnace, a kind of nettle sting, but she got away from him as quickly as possible, following Bob's instruction to "Plant the coin in his chest and run like the clappers." She still had no idea what "run like the clappers" meant.) It was creepy. She could feel dimensional shifts while intangible? That was something she never would have guessed. Wow, she really didn't like it.

But she didn't like being corporeal in a demon dimension either, so she sucked in a deep breath, steeled herself, and went intangible once more, running again towards the only direction she knew at this point: forward.

Did she know what she was doing? Not at all. But she knew she had to get Logan out of there. He was just stubborn enough to get himself killed, and for who? Pyro? That was nuts, and she knew if she put it that way to him, he'd agree.

Okay, so this bad guy sounded scary. But she didn't care how strong he was - you couldn't hit it if it was intangible. And she hoped that was enough of a plan to save their asses, because beyond that, she had nothing.

* * *

Logan opened his eyes to a glaring, angry sun, so bright and hot he squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand until he adjusted to it. He knew right away from the sound and the smell that he was on the beach, the blue waves crashing against yellow shore. He saw a couple of surfers so far away they were simply colorful blips.

"So, mate, who's been killing you?" Bob asked with an inordinate amount of cheerfulness.

Logan sighed and looked over at him. Bob was sitting under a rainbow hued beach umbrella, drinking a nuclear blue-green drink out of a tall glass decorated with a small plastic parrot, and totally naked. "You forgot your pants," Logan pointed out.

"Nope. It's a nude beach."

"Why the hell -" Logan paused and looked down at himself. Yep, he was nude too.

He glared at Bob, who gave him a shit eating grin. "What? It isn't like you haven't been naked in front of the entire world. A new world deserves a gander."

Maybe if nudity bothered him he'd raise a stink about it, but he didn't honestly care, so he let it go. "I've been fighting Arba. Oh, and there was this Vrillyan, but I stomped its ass."

"Arba?" Bob sat up, seemingly genuinely surprised. "You're in his realm then? Why?"

Logan tried to tell him the abbreviated version of the story, then realized there wasn't one, and just went ahead and cut out every extraneous adjective he could. Then, as he reached for his own plastic parrot adorned glass, he asked, "Why did'ja assume I was in his realm?"

"He's nephilim; he can't set foot in the Earth realm."

"That's a law?"

"The Powers locked them out after they tried the whole "rule the world" thing. It wasn't pretty. People worshipped them in droves, forsaking all other gods, yadda yadda yadda, and they were officially banished for being spotlight whores."

"So if they step foot on Earth ..?"

"Deader than bell bottoms." He took a sip of his drink before adding, "They'd be killed instantly. Earth is the forbidden zone."

Logan tried to reconcile that with what Arba told Giles, and couldn't. "But Arba seemed to think that if they pulled this off, he could return to Earth."

Bob snorted derisively. "No offense to Arba … what am I saying? Fuck him! All offense to that dickhead … he's a moron. He probably got conned by someone slicker and smarter than him. Even if this god he's working with could overrule the Powers - highly unlikely - they couldn't possibly also overrule the Ogdoad and those Norse buggers and those really schizo Hindu ones. The Powers weren't the only ones who wanted the nephilim gone."

Logan raised an eyebrow at him. "Weren't you a Hindu god?"

"I don't ascribe to any one group."

"'Cause no group wants you."

"That's just a coincidence."

Logan scowled at him, but got back on topic. "So he's been set up?"

"Looks that way." He raised his glass, and said, "Go on, enjoy your Afghan Monkey."

"Excuse me?"

"The drink. It's an Afghan Monkey."

Logan looked at his glass suspiciously. Knowing Bob, it was possible there was actual monkey in it. "What's in it?"

"Rum, Midori, other things, but no, no monkey. Try it."

Logan took a tentative sip, then grimaced. "I think you just gave me diabetes."

"Oh come on, it's not that sweet. I didn't even add the whipped cream."

He set the drink down in the sand. It shouldn't have been able to stand up, but it did. He was pretty sure that Bob had just made this world up; it was a mindscape that existed only to amuse him. He suspected the same thing of the drink.

"I bet you've figured out by now that he's immortal in his realm. You need some help?"

"Well, if I die again, maybe. You could do me a big favor, though. Can you go find Giles?"

"Where is he?"

"I have no fucking clue. I figure there's a seventy five percent chance he's already dead, but he's a crafty old bastard, so I figure there's a good chance he's still hanging on."

"He's no longer in the same dimension?"

"I doubt it."

"Hmm." Bob considered that a moment, staring out at the ocean and sipping his super sweet drink. "I'll have a look around, see what I can dig up. But if you die again, mate, I'm gonna hafta pay a visit."

"Feel free. I'm gettin' tired of it myself." He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face. It was a nice break.

But he knew when he tasted blood and the heat on his skin became a frantic burn of healing, that he was back in Arba's realm. Well, that sucked.

For perhaps the first time ever, Logan missed one of Bob's mindscapes.

* * *

Angel let the water run in the sink, watching the steam rise from the basin. He put his fingers under the spray and felt the warmth of the water, but somewhat distantly. That was always strange, but stranger still was the fact that even though he could barely feel it, he still preferred hot water over cold. Some Human habits were hard to break, no matter how long you'd been a vampire.

He splashed the water on his face, almost feeling it, and looked up at the empty mirror to find someone looking back at him.

Angel was momentarily caught off balance, but only for a moment, as the reflection looking back at him was not his face but Bob's. For some reason, that really didn't surprise him; nothing Bob did surprised him anymore. Oh, maybe he could do something that would shock him, but he tried not to imagine it for fear it would actually occur. "Something I can help you with?" Angel asked the Bob in the mirror.

Bob nodded and gave him an easy grin. His hair was almost shoulder length now, and he had a bit of golden stubble on his face. He was looking more and more like a surfer every day. Angel was kind of surprised he didn't have a piercing. "You up for raising some hell, mate?"

Angel wasn't sure if he meant it figuratively or literally, but he was kind of afraid to ask. Knowing Bob, the only answer he'd give him was, "Yes."


	18. Chapter 18

18

Giles seriously hoped his life didn't start flashing before his eyes. There were some things he really didn't need or want to remember.

Mostly he was just watching the Senior Partners talking with Ate. He couldn't hear them, but he could see their lips moving, and he was trying to read them, but he wasn't doing well. He didn't think the words "banana" or "armadillo" would come up in their conversation. (Or at least he hoped not.) He was still trying to get the impetus to get up - he was probably dead in about a thousand different ways here - but he was just too weak to move. It was a combination of the spell being too draining and him being too bloody old. Oh shit, he hated getting old. It seemed unfair. Maybe he should have chased perpetual youth, even though everyone who did got screwed over in unimaginable ways. Still, brain melting would have been preferable to this awful waiting.

Suddenly the Senior Partner, in its strange "rich little girl going to a tea party" guise, turned to him and gave him a scathingly cold look from her empty eyes. "What are you up to?" she asked, although it sounded more like a demand.

Giles met her gaze coldly. "I'm building a scale model of the Eiffel Tower with camel hair paintbrushes. What the bloody hell do you think I'm doing?"

The little girl didn't look amused, but then again, she never did. "You couldn't have been traced here. How did they know?"

This was baffling. It might have been torture; he was so tired, it felt like it. "How does who know what?"

A handsome Asian man in an expensive tailored suit suddenly popped into existence slightly behind and to the right of the girl. From the way he vaguely shimmered, Giles guessed he was one of Wolfram and Hart's ghost employees. "The boy has invoked the protections of the Gorgons," he reported, not even glancing at Giles or Ate. "We can't touch them as long as he's in range."

"Get him out of range."

"He's leading the group."

The girl made a noise of disgust. "Human divinity shield. Disgusting."

Invoking the Gorgons? Only Brendan could do that … oh, yes; only Brendan could. Angel was here; that's who they were asking him about. But how did Angel and the others know he was here? "Oh come on," Ate said. "Even you can do something about those stone faced bitches."

The girl gave her an acrid glance. "You wouldn't fight them when you were divine, Ate. So I suggest you shut your mouth." Ate looked as if she had been slapped, but the girl turned back to the ghost and spared her no further attention. "The Gorgons won't protect vampires. Angel and Kieran are vulnerable - target them."

The Asian man looked down at where the floor would be, if there was one. "The intercom system is being flooded with loud music. It's swamping all the security channels."

"What? How?"

"It's the Murder City Devils."

"Who?"

"A band. That's the music coming through the audio channels."

The little girl scowled at the ghost. "I don't care what's playing. How did our combat magicians let this through?"

There was a long pause, the ghost still looking down at the nonexistent floor. "Electra has drained all the power; emergency back up systems now coming on." He paused briefly. "It's now raining snakes from the ceiling, from the lobby to the eighth floor."

"Degei," Giles muttered. The eyes of the Senior Partner flicked towards him, and somewhere in their dead, dark depths, a look of disgust flashed.

"You truck with death gods now, Ripper? A very dangerous proposition."

"I had no contact with him at all," he told them honestly. "He's not my friend. Although I understand he's really quite nice."

"What?" the Asian man exclaimed, still looking down at the white light of the floor. When he looked up at the Senior Partner, he seemed pained. "The entire security and magic staff is Morris dancing."

"What?" the Senior Partner exclaimed in horror as Giles laughed at the mental image that brought up. Did they have the little bells on their shoes? This made him laugh harder. The little girl gave him a disgusted look again, clearly blaming him for this outrage, but Giles had to admit that level of cruelty never would have occurred to him. Make people Morris dance? Abominable. Did the Wolfram and Hart people deserve that? Well, yes, probably. "Tell them to stop."

"They can't stop. They're not doing it voluntarily."

"How is this being done? Why aren't the protective wards working?"

The Asian man's shoulders suddenly sagged, as if under a tremendous weight. "There's now a message appearing on all the computer terminals and security monitors. You need to see it."

The little girl flicked her hand, as if swatting at a fly, and a nearly holographic image of a computer screen appeared. It was a pure black screen, and in green letters, a message appeared: _Don't make me come up there. - Kisses, Bob._ At the end, a tiny little animation of a hula dancer wiggled her grass skirt at them.

The little girl got a very ugly look on her face. Her black eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared, and her hands clenched into tiny fists at her side. If she'd been human, she'd have probably turned crimson. "That insufferable -" she used a word that his ears refused to hear, that sent a stabbing pain through the center of his brain. A god word, a type that humans - or demons - could never understand. They had their own language, and it was strangely lethal to all lesser beings. Even the ghost, already dead and intangible, flinched.

"It's a bluff. If he comes up here he's breaking the treaty -"

"The treaty only includes attack; there's nothing about proximity," the little girl snapped. "And if you haven't noticed, he's attacking the employees, not us. He can keep doing that all he wants. We attack the Powers lackeys, don't we? He could bring this building down and it wouldn't be classified as an attack, because it's just a physical object." She slapped the air with her hand, and the monitor disappeared. "Fucking asshole. Tell whoever's still left to stand down. Tell Angel we're releasing Giles to his custody, and he's to leave immediately and not return, him or any of his stupidity brigade. I want that fucking Gorgon chosen off my property as of five minutes ago."

The ghost looked uncertain and slightly queasy. "Yes ma'am." He disappeared as abruptly as he had arrived.

"Just like that?" Ate said, finally finding her voice. "You're giving up? Bob isn't even a full Power, he's a rogue -"

"Which makes him much more dangerous," the Senior Partner snapped, turning sharply to face her and glowering malevolently. It was such an evil look that Ate actually backed up a step. "The Powers stick to their treaties; they have no interest in reviving the war directly. But they don't control Bob as much as they think they do. He'd never have gotten his powers back otherwise. I'd rather face the Powers than him, because my glorious enemies are inherently predictable. But Bob? He should have been one of us. There's no telling what he'll do or when." She kicked at an invisible object on the floor and muttered, "Fucking Morris dancing. He's psychotic."

When the Senior Partner looked up, Giles noticed she was staring at him again. "He's not even in this dimension, Rupert. How did he know where to find you?"

That was an excellent question. His first thought was Logan had died and gained Bob's attention, so as soon as he rescued Logan, he came here for him ... but Logan would have been in the group with Angel, wouldn't he? He didn't see Logan missing a fight, certainly not against Wolfram and Hart, no matter what shape he was in. So what happened?

"Fucking Weapon X," the little girl cursed. "I knew we should have killed that bastard when we had a chance. Human filth."

"What's Weapon X?" Ate asked. She was ignored.

So Logan got Bob's attention, but sent him his way instead? Well, how about that? He owed Logan a drink next time he saw him.

The little girl stalked over to him, and leaned down, so she was staring him right in the eye. He could now see the darkness in her eyes was swirling, like little black holes speeded up a million times; a writhing, wriggling thing, hate given form and function. The longer he stared into the abyss of her eyes, the more nauseous and dizzy he felt. He bet if you stared long enough, you went mad. "Know this, Rupert. Bob is not a good guy; he'll never be a good guy. He's working with you now, but only because it suits him. He picked Weapon X as his avatar for a reason, and it's not a benign one. You don't pick a major league weapon like that if you have no use in mind for it."

"Yes, I imagine that was your reasoning for going after him first, right?"

She scowled at him, and the writhing in her eyes increased. His gut was twisting into a solid, aching knot. "You are pawns. You will always be pawns to gods in battles you will not understand. And on top of that, Rupert, you are damned."

He had known that for a very long time. Perhaps since he was born. You got a sense of these things sometimes, even if you couldn't express it. "But I'm not owned by you, so I suppose I'm ahead of the game."

The look in her eyes was pure rage, and he was sure he was going to be killed that very second, but there was a flash of light, and he suddenly found himself laying on a leather couch in a posh office, with incongruously loud rock music coming from somewhere near the desk. The door was kicked open, and Angel came in, closely followed by Bren, Kier, and Naomi. "Giles, are you okay?" Angel asked. He was holding a sword whose blade was painted black, green, and red from a variety of blood.

"Apparently. But I'm afraid I don't have the energy to stand just yet."

Kier and Xander came over and helped him up, propping him between the two of them. "You owe me ten bucks," the vampire said to Xander, who rolled his eyes. Kier told Giles, "He bet me you'd be knocked out when we found you."

"Did he?" He gave Xander a sour look.

"Oh, c'mon Giles," Xander protested. "You're always knocked out. So am I. Between the two of us, we should have constant concussions."

"Well, it's a good thing we have thicker than average skulls, isn't it?" Giles replied.

Xander started to agree, but then stopped and looked at him askance. "Was that an insult?"

"Of course not," Giles lied. Xander stared at him for a long moment, probably aware he was lying but not sure what to do about it, and then Kier got them moving towards the door.

There were snakes, tiny, pretty, but reasonably lethal coral snakes slithering across the floor, but they were good enough to ignore them entirely. Giles didn't see Bob anywhere, but there was never an implication that he was physically here, was there? Bob didn't need to be here to cause unimaginable chaos in the Wolfram and Hart building?

He didn't know that. Up until now, he'd always given the impression that he had to be here.

Giles suddenly wondered if the Senior Partners had been telling the truth about Bob.

* * *

Logan regained consciousness in time to see that Arba had almost totally reconstituted. Ah shit. This just wasn't his day. Night. Whatever the fuck it was, it wasn't his.

He could slice his head off again, but it only seemed to buy him a minute at best. Goddamn, this fucker just wouldn't go down. He was even worse than him, and that was saying something.

But he knew how to beat him, didn't he? Bob had told him how, whether he knew it or not.

Logan was still healing, he could feel the burn in his arms and legs and midsection, but he forced himself up to his feet, using the wall to help him. What he had to do now was go; get the fuck out of here. Just not too fast. He was prey, so he had to rabbit out of here and let the big bad wolf threaten to gobble him up.

He'd taken maybe a step away when he caught a familiar scent, one that really didn't belong here, so he wasn't too surprised when Kitty stepped out of the wall and grabbed his arm. "Come on," she said, still breathing hard. She must have ran all the way. When she became physical, he could smell the fear in her sweat.

"Kid, what're you doin' here?"

"Rescuing you! Now let's go, before -"

Logan heard a wet squelching noise, and saw Kitty eyes go wide looking over his shoulder, so he didn't need to turn around to know what she was looking at. "Who's your little friend?" Arba asked.

"Go," Logan urged, and she started running again, hand gripping his arm and pulling him along. Normally he could run her over, but right now he was lucky to be walking. Arba caught up with them almost instantly, but his extended arm cut through them like empty air, momentarily flummoxing him. Kitty ran them through a rock wall, and once they were through the other side, Logan could hear him pounding the wall, breaking the rocks into gravel. They became solid, and while Kitty started to run, he grabbed her arm and tugged, stopping her.

She looked back at him in surprise. "What? We need to go."

"We can't get too far ahead of him. We need him to think he could catch us at any second."

He could tell she was struggling very hard to be polite - was she Canadian? - but the look in her eye suggested he'd left most of his brains on the floor of the canyon. "What? Why?"

"Just trust me, kid, this is gonna work." Or at least he hoped so, or he was going to inadvertently kill a lot of people.


	19. Chapter 19

19

In retrospect, he wasn't that surprised Kitty came after him. Although even she wondered if her power was "super useless", she'd been out in the field enough to realize that being intangible had some real advantages. He for one was grateful of that now.

But cuing her into his plan without Arba overhearing was nearly impossible. Okay, he probably couldn't hear him over the wall punching, but what if he did? He couldn't risk it. He just had to hope she trusted him.

As soon as Arba was through, they started running again, through walls and any demons that tried to stop them. They looked rather foolish trying to grab or hit air. After the first handful humiliated themselves, no one else bothered.

Kitty ran them into the cliff, and then, in the darkness of all that rock, he had a distinct floating sensation. This was confirmed when they came up through the cliff and were now suddenly on top of it. He was so glad she had mastered her powers this way. He whistled sharply, looking down at Arba, and yelled, "Hey fucko, you miss us?"

"Is taunting the zombie Hulk actually a good thing to do?" Kitty asked nervously.

"Trust me, kiddo. I know what I'm doing." He paused briefly. "Kinda."

"Kinda?"

Arba was on his way up, so he turned and grabbed Kitty's hand, and started running down the tunnel. They could hear him cursing and blustering behind them, every angry step like a small temblor, shaking the rocks beneath their feet. Kitty kept shooting nervous looks over her shoulder, but Logan wasn't that concerned. After all, she was intangible - what could he do about that? Kitty really wanted to turn on the gas, but he held her back. Arba had to be so focused on catching them he'd lose track of his surroundings. He also hoped he was as big a moron as he seemed. So far, so good.

Halfway down the tunnel, when the noise of the dimensional rift started to get loud, he stopped and shouted, "Come on you half-breed asshole! You ain't god enough to kill me, you fucking piece of shit!"

"Again with the taunting," Kitty complained, grabbing his arm. "Storm was right; you do have a death wish."

That made him pause and look at her. "She said I had a death wish?"

The thumping of Arba's footsteps and his cursing got louder, so they had to start moving again. But goddamn it, that wasn't fair. Storm was probably just repeating Jean's thoughts, as Jean had accused him of that before, but … hell, what if he did have a death wish? It wasn't a real one anyways. If there was a great possibility you'd recover after being dragged a few miles by a train, why wouldn't you jump in front of it if it would help someone else? He could take the hits; it was well established he could. He was still spitting up bits of pulped lung. If you could take it, then you should, especially if it spared someone else. It wasn't a death wish, it was common sense.

Arba was telling him everything he was going to do to him, and they were rather depressingly pedestrian - rip him in half, stomp his skull flat, yada yada yada. He winced as they passed through the dimensional rift - the noise had ramped up to physically painful - but he stopped just beyond its invisible periphery and faced Arba, popping his claws and yelling, "C'mon, fuckhead, come get me if you're man enough!"

Arba roared and charged him. Kitty grabbed his arm, but he shook her off, hissing out the corner of his mouth, "It's gonna be fine, just stand back." In case Bob was wrong, he didn't want her getting hurt while Arba tossed him around like a rag doll.

But as soon as Arba was through, in the subway tunnel, he stopped dead - or at least his lower half did, and his upper half almost went lunging towards the ground; he wasn't prepared for the stop. It looked like there was a growing greyness, starting from his feet and moving rapidly up his legs. Arba looked up at the ceiling, and screamed, "No!"

It was his last word. The greyness swamped him, covering him head to foot, and then a gust of wind reduced him to a swirling cloud of ash that sifted across the floor of tunnel like a dumped ashtray. "Yeah, motherfucker!" Logan shouted in triumph, kicking up a bit of the ash that used to be Arba. "Ain't so tough on my world, are ya?"

"What the hell just happened?" Kitty asked.

"Bob told me the gods had banned the nephilim from the Earth realm. Some guy conned Arba into thinking it could be reversed, but Bob said it was impossible. This proves it."

"Ah." Kitty obviously didn't know he was a nephilim, or what the hell that was or what that meant, or when he had talked to Bob, but she played along, because she was good like that. "So what do we do about this dimensional … hole, or whatever it is?"

"Nothing. It'll collapse in on itself now that the guy who made the dimension is dead. The whole dimension will cease to exist."

"I love how you say these things like any idiot should know it," Storm said, walking down the tunnel with Paloma trailing behind. Thanks to a small ball of hovering fire, he could see Pyro was trailing way behind. Why? Looked like he didn't want to get too close to Paloma. She gave him a scrutinizing look. "Didn't you start off wearing a shirt? You're like Captain Kirk, always losing your shirt."

He shrugged. "Considerin' the beatin' I took, you're probably lucky I still have my pants." This made Pyro snort a laugh.

Storm briefly shot him a scowl - she didn't find it funny - and then shot Kitty a scolding look. "And you, running off without telling me."

"I wanted to act before I got too scared to do anything," she admitted. "I'm sorry."

"Don't ever apologize for savin' anyone's ass," Logan told her. He almost gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, but then he realized his hands were covered in blood. She probably wouldn't appreciate it.

Storm shot him a _"Don't encourage her" _sort of look, but how could he not? He was the last person in the world to chide anyone for not abiding by the rules. That's why he was a shitty teacher. Only after he paused to lean aside and spit up a bit of blood and a knocked out tooth did Storm think to ask, "Are you still healing?"

"We had ta make a quick exit."

"That guy was punching walls down," Kitty told her. "Rock walls! Really thick. Believe me, I went through them, and those suckers were huge."

"What about Giles? John said he disappeared."

"I sent Bob after him. He'll be fine." If he was still alive, but he decided not to add that. See, you didn't have to tell Giles that sometimes you had to take one for the team - he already knew. Of course it would have been nice if he mentioned it beforehand, but Logan wasn't sure he would have either.

Storm's expression seemed to indicate that she thought he might have a serious head injury. "How did you send Bob after him?"

"Not in front of the kids. Later." He didn't want to say he'd died, as he might have to explain to Paloma why that didn't bother him.

Storm got it, and grimaced. She wasn't used to him taking his own death so casually. But hey, if it only lasted a couple seconds, did it even count? "Why don't we get out of here before emergency teams enter the subway? We can question Paloma back at the school."

"Why we questionin' her?"

"John thinks she's been lying to us."

Logan worked the kinks out of his neck, and shrugged. Really, after today, it wouldn't surprise him. "I'll question her. Nobody can lie to me."

Paloma looked horrified at that statement. And if she was a liar, she probably oughta be.

* * *

By the time they got back to the mansion, Paloma was spilling her guts, apparently not wanting to face off against him. Considering he was covered in the blood of three or four different species, he couldn't blame her.

She got involved with these assholes who contacted a demon - well, half demon; Arba was a half-breed - and were convinced they could gain ultimate power through a deal. The problem was, Paloma figured out that it was a set up and she was being singled out for sacrifice, so she took off, and once she ended up in New York she decided on a whim to pretend to be a mutant to gain protection from her old group. It didn't work. She attempted to throw herself on Storm's mercy while Logan went to get cleaned up. Teenagers fucked up, especially scared teenagers, but by inadvertently getting them involved in the fight against Arba and Raijin, she could have led to a lot of death. So Logan wasn't sure he was inclined to be merciful, but that was Storm's call.

They'd put Oz in one of the garages, which wasn't necessarily comfortable, but would let him transform back into his Human form in privacy. As for Whoomp, Logan just pointed him to the nearest IHOP and figured he could be their problem from now on.

There were two phone messages waiting for them. Oz's witchy girlfriend, Veronique, had called, and reported that the entire coven, minus Ate, had been returned to Earth, presumably by Raijin. But they had no idea where Ate was. He told her she could come by and pick up Oz, but he couldn't help her with Ate.

The second call was from Angel. They had Giles, and while he was really tired, he was okay. Apparently Giles had teleported himself and Raijin to the Senior Partner's dimensional nexus in the Wolfram and Hart building, so Bob got them to help rescue him. So Giles's big plan was to pit a god against another god? Smart. Especially the Senior Partners, who were really pissy bastards.

Logan was exhausted himself, and figured he could catch a nap and regain some of his strength, so he laid down, and didn't wake up for sixteen hours. It was pretty embarrassing when he woke up and knew almost instantaneously that he had been asleep far longer than he had ever intended. Getting the shit beaten out of him had a tendency to do that to him; his healing factor liked to take an extended time out and repair everything. It had, as far as he could tell.

He wasn't terribly surprised Storm called him to her office. He expected a chewing out, but he didn't get it, which made him suspicious. She caught him up on Paloma's situation, which involved Storm sending Paloma off to Los Angeles - she figured Angel and his crew were more adept at dealing with the problems of sorcerers and demons than they were. That was actually a really good decision.

Storm had this serious look on her face, that led him to guess she was about to fire his ass (if you could actually be fired from something as loose and half-assed as the X-Men, but why not?) but she surprised him again. Settled behind her desk, hands folded in front of her, she said, "I have a proposal for you, Logan."

"We haven't even gotten to first base yet."

She raised an eyebrow at his joke, but didn't laugh. "I've been thinking that there are some situations - this current one, for example - where tackling it in a traditional way won't be effective. I was thinking that perhaps we could try out a different type of team, one under your purview."

She used about ten words she didn't need to use. "A strike team?"

"In a manner of speaking. This isn't giving you a license to kill, that is still a very last resort and only used in the most dire of circumstances, but a smaller, more covert team might be called for in some circumstances."

"Do I get to choose my people?"

She nodded. "You do, except for one: Pyro. Please take him."

He snorted a derisive laugh. "The kids ain't happy with him, huh?"

"Bobby's reaction seemed to have been representative for the majority. We know that Bob changed his mind for him and he won't switch back, but they don't. They assume he's a traitor."

"He was a traitor. Can't blame 'em for thinking he's still a weasel."

"No, but if it keeps up, we're going to have a firestorm on our hands one of these days." She reached into an upper desk drawer, and pulled out a file, which she handed to him. "These are some potential members."

"I got some in mind already."

"Name them."

"Kitty."

"Hell no."

"C'mon, she's perfect."

"She's a girl, Logan! She's not a fighter."

"Yeah, she is, she just doesn't know it yet. And a good strike team isn't just brute force; you need intelligence, stealth, defense, and offence. You gotta cover the bases. Kitty could do a lot. She's my evasion and infiltration in one package."

She stared at him, her blue eyes frosty. "Why do I get the sick feeling you've done this type of thing before?"

He shrugged. "'Cause I probably have. Let's ask Kitty, huh? She's old enough to decide for herself."

She considered that a moment. "Fine. But I'll do the asking."

"Why? Don't trust me?"

"No. It's just that most of the kids want to impress you. Did you have someone else in mind?"

Why would the kids want to impress him? He decided to just leave it. "Piotr."

She nodded. "Done."

"The Doc, what's her name … Khoury."

"Shaheen?" She seemed surprised. "She's really not a fighter."

"No, but she increases other mutant's powers, which is instantly useful. Not to mention being probably immortal and not feeling pain. And what team can't use a Doctor?"

"You like her, don't you?"

"Beside the point."

Storm smiled knowingly. "Done."

Logan started flipping through the folder, just scanning the files. "Oh, what about Alchemy?"

"Nariko?" She both sounded and looked confused. "Why her?"

"She can touch something and turn it into something else: cement into water, glass into cellophane. You can't tell me that isn't useful."

She conceded the point with a nod. "Done."

He flipped through the files, not terribly impressed with anything he saw, until he came to what seemed like a needlessly thick file. "Zehra Bayar, codenamed Impulse. Bit of a troublemaker, is she?"

Storm let out a groan of disappointment. "That's an understatement. She's a mid-range telekinetic with pre-cognitive flashes, and an attitude that could curdle milk. She gets along with no one, the chip on her shoulder could sink the Titanic, and then she has medical issues, which just makes her more bitter."

"What medical issues?"

"She's epileptic. If she over-exerts herself, strains her powers, it triggers a seizure."

Logan considered that a moment, staring at her picture. She was a sullen looking girl with dark hair and dark eyes, her face seemingly full of sharp angles that could cut you like razors. She was trying to look as prickly as possible, and she had succeeded. "Well, I'll have to watch that, won't I? I'll take her."

Storm looked at him curiously. "She's hard to work with, Logan."

"In that case, she's like me. So if I can't make her into something akin to a grudging team player, no one can."

"Now that I agree with. Good luck, and thank you for taking my two most troublesome kids."

"Hey, if they're total pains in the asses, you're gettin' 'em back."

He wasn't about to admit it, but this sounded like it could almost be fun. Which he knew were famous last words, so he wasn't about to say it out loud.

* * *

The End


End file.
